


A Bad Job

by toyhto



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-07-27 18:33:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toyhto/pseuds/toyhto
Summary: “You git,” Eames says, already holding a gun at him, “you look like someone, well, like someone stabbed you in the chest.”





	1. Leipzig

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatched Inception after years and well, what else could I do after that besides falling into a lovely sinkhole that is Arthur/Eames.
> 
> I think this story is going to have two or three chapters in total. But we'll see about that. Also, you can say hi to me on [tumblr](http://toyhto.tumblr.com)!

The plan was not to mess it up.  
  
That should’ve been easy. The job was simple: get in, get the information, get out. And it was supposed to be a quick one, too. Forty-five minutes. Just fucking forty-five minutes, and it’s been three before Arthur gets stabbed.  
  
He’s had worse, of course he has. It’s just that he really didn’t expect this to be that kind of a day.  
  
There’re steps in the doorway. He reaches for his gun but the pain in his chest is sharp enough that his head is swinging. Then he realises he knows those footsteps.  
  
“Don’t shoot.”  
  
“You git,” Eames says, already holding a gun at him, “you look like someone, well, like someone stabbed you in the chest.”  
  
“You can’t shoot me or we’ll all wake up. I can do it. It’s just forty-five minutes.”  
  
“Fucking hell, Arthur.” But Eames hasn’t shot him yet.  
  
“Or less,” Arthur says, tasting blood. He must’ve bit his tongue. If this is really going to take forty-five minutes, he’s probably going to take the fucking gun and end this himself. Fuck the money.  
  
But he really needs that money.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, lowering the gun but only slightly. “surely it’s not worth that.”  
  
“It’s just pain.”  
  
“Still,” Eames says and takes a deep breath. “I can’t believe I’m agreeing with this.”  
  
Arthur tries to smile but has a feeling that Eames isn’t buying it. “Anyway, you should go help the others.”  
  
“They’re fine.”  
  
“Eames.” Fucking hell, he’s bleeding onto the door. Isn’t it a bit too much to suppose that he could deal with Eames’ stubbornness as well?  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, kneeling down onto the floor next to Arthur.  
  
“You can’t just –“  
  
“Shut up,” Eames says and starts pulling his shirt off, “and try not to move. I’ll try to stop the bleeding.”  
  
Arthur opens his mouth but what comes out sounds a lot like a groan. _Fuck_. He’s been stabbed before, he thinks, in a dream, but he can’t remember it hurting like this. And then Eames is pressing something against his ribs, it’s fabric, it’s Eames’ shirt, and he stares as his eyelids waver and as Eames presses tighter, tight enough he’s not sure if it’s the wound that hurts like hell or Eames’ hands.  
  
“You’re alright,” Eames is saying, which is crazy because Arthur _knows_ he’s alright, he’s sleeping in a nice hotel room in Leipzig. He just doesn’t feel alright right now. But when he tries to point that out, he realises his words are becoming strangely blurred. “Alright. _Alright_. Listen to me, Arthur.”  
  
“Shut the fuck –“  
  
“So impolite,” Eames says, frowning at him, only the man actually looks concerned, or maybe it’s something to do with the light, or maybe the pain is affecting Arthur’s judgement, “even now. For someone who thinks they’re pretty clever, you’re oddly stupid.”  
  
He tries to tell that he’s not. He’s _not._ But _fuck_ it hurts. If he was alone, he probably would’ve shot himself already. Just to wake up. Just to make it stop.  
  
No. _No._ He can deal with this. Just forty-five…  
  
“What you really should be doing,” Eames says, “is that you should be listening to my voice. This’ll probably be the only fucking time that you aren’t going to tell me to shut up, right? The only time when you aren’t going to be an obnoxious prick.”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“Easy,” Eames says, his other hand somehow ending up resting on Arthur’s forehead, thumb tracing low circles. It’s almost as if Eames was stroking him. God that’s a weird thought. “Easy, now. Just breathe. You’re alright.”  
  
_Of course I’m fucking alright_ , he thinks.  
  
A little later, he forgets where he is. Just for a second. But it’s enough that for a moment he thinks he’s really been stabbed, really lying on the floor covered in his own blood, and really dying. But Eames is there. Eames is there, holding him down. Thank God for that. He never wanted to die alone. And then he remembers again, bites his lip and think about those forty-five minutes.  
  
“After,” Eames says, only it’s a bit hard to make sense of the words because Arthur’s ears are ringing with a dull sound, “after this, you’re going to go to the hotel and take a bath and probably spend fucking half an hour fixing your hair. That’s what you’re going to do. After you get out of here. Just think about it.”  
  
He can’t. His mind is dull with pain. But Eames is holding his face now, his cheek leans against the flat of Eames’ palm, and he blinks and blinks and blinks.  
  
“Goddamn business,” Eames mutters.  
  
Business. Money. Arthur’s going to get money out of this. He wants that money. Badly. But he can’t figure out what for.  
  
“Any minute now,” Eames says, “any minute now they get the information out of that poor bastard and then I’ll shoot you in the head and get us the fuck out of here.”  
  
He tries to smile at Eames.  
  
“Stop smiling. It’s goddamn worrying.”  
  
He kind of likes Eames. Yeah. Of course, Eames is irritating as hell and all in all unbearable, but also very good at his job. And Arthur likes that. He likes all of that. That’s the way he likes them, irritating as hell and almost unbearable. Just almost. That’s the way he likes his…  
  
“Your eyes are going soft.”  
  
“No,” Arthur says, only he can barely hear his own voice. The pain isn’t in his chest anymore. It’s everywhere.  
  
He can do this.  
  
He can fucking do this.  
  
Even if his face is strangely wet.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, and his hand is so warm against Arthur’s face, so warm, “Arthur, you’re a fucking idiot. That’s what you are. You should’ve just let me shoot you. The money can’t be worth _anything_. Not that I’m not oddly impressed, because I am. I’m stupid that way. And don’t you start smiling, it’s goddamn worrying, that’s not the way you smile, you sneaky bastard. That’s not the way you smile at all.”  
  
He blinks. It’s going to have to stop eventually, the pain. And maybe he’s forgotten. Maybe this isn’t the dream. Maybe…  
  
“It’s okay,” Eames says, “it’s okay. Don’t worry.”  
  
“I…”  
  
“Listen,” Eames says, coming closer to him, “listen to me, Arthur, you’re in a dream. I know that look. You’re losing it. But you’re in a dream. Very soon, you’re going to wake up in a nice hotel room. And we’ll go for a drink.”  
  
That’s nice. But he doesn’t buy it. He can’t possibly be in a dream. It’s too real. He opens his mouth.  
  
“Wine,” Eames says, “I’ll buy you a bottle of wine. Fucking expensive wine, that is, just the kind you like, you posh idiot.”  
  
“Eames…”  
  
“Don’t speak.”  
  
“You’re nice.”  
  
Something shifts on Eames’ face, something Arthur can’t really make sense of. “Yes, I am. Fucking nice. And you’re out of your mind.”  
  
“I like you.”  
  
“You really shouldn’t,” Eames says, and there’s something pressed lightly against Arthur’s mouth. Eames’ thumb. He lets his mouth fall half-open. “Fucking hell, Arthur.”  
  
He likes Eames. He really likes Eames. And not only because Eames is fucking handsome. Eames is nice. Eames is sitting on the floor, holding Arthur’s face when Arthur’s going to die.  
  
There’re steps but they’re distant.  
  
“ _We got it_ ,” someone says, but it’s coming far away. Arthur doesn’t quite remember what _it_ is.  
  
“Thank God,” Eames says and pulls his hand away, and Arthur doesn’t want that, no, he doesn’t, but he can’t find the voice to say it. And then Eames is pulling a gun at him, pressing it lightly against the side of his head, and the cold terror runs through Arthur. “Don’t look at me like that, darling,” Eames says in a soft voice. “See you on the other side.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
What the fucking -  
  
Oh.  
  
_Oh._  
  
He grabs the bedspread and sits down, his heart beating madly. There was blood, there was blood and pain, someone stabbed him and he was going to die and Eames… But it’s not true. It’s not. It was just a dream. He should take a breath. He should take another breath.  
  
“What the fuck happened down there?” Lucy is asking.  
  
“Arthur got stabbed,” Eames says, “right in the beginning.”  
  
“Fuck.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“I’m alright,” Arthur manages to say. He can feel them going to say something, maybe ask again, but he throws a glance at Eames and for once the man doesn’t only read his mind but also does what he’s wordlessly asking for.  
  
“Okay,” Eames says, “so, the information. You got it? Emil?”  
  
Everything’s like it should be. Arthur listens when Emil and Jack give a short explanation of what happened when Arthur was lying on the floor in a pool of his own blood. For a few times he notices his thoughts slipping away but everything seems to be alright anyway. They got what they needed. The banker whose favourite summer apartment they built for the dream is still lying on the narrow bed next to the window. Now all that they need to do is to clean after themselves and fuck off.  
  
It’s only after Arthur’s already on the street, walking to a random direction with carefully unrushed steps, that he realises he’s pressing his thumb against his chest.  
  
Well, that’s the way it is. Sometimes what happens in a dream lingers with you.  
  
In the next corner, he realises someone’s following him. He pretends to check his watch to get a subtle glance behind.  
  
It’s Eames.  
  
Fuck.  
  
He crosses the street and manages to walk another block before Eames’ shoulder brushes against his. It’s late afternoon, there’s enough people walking the streets that it should look like an accident. He takes a deep breath and glances at Eames.  
  
“Excuse me –“  
  
“You dropped this,” Eames says in a polite tone and holds out Arthur’s wallet.  
  
_You bastard._ “Oh. Thank you.”  
  
“Have a nice day,” Eames says and walks on, disappearing to the crowd. Arthur unfolds the wallet. There’s a note that has an address in it, written in Eames’ sloppy handwriting.  
  
Eames is a fucking moron if he thinks Arthur’s going to come.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s a pub, a dark pub with too little space and too many people. In the corner, there’s a screen that shows a soccer match. Eames is sitting by a small round table, nodding at Arthur when he walks in.  
  
He doesn’t know what he expected. Because he wasn’t expecting a hotel room. That’s what Cobb would’ve done. Cobb would’ve asked Arthur to come to the hotel where he’d be staying for this particular job, just to check out that Arthur was fine after getting stabbed and almost bleeding out in a dream. But Arthur and Cobb were friends. _Are_ friends. It’s just that now that Cobb’s not in the business anymore, Arthur tries to stay out of his life. He doesn’t have that many friends. And if he gets too clingy and Cobb gets frustrated at him, then he’s not going to have anyone.  
  
He goes to the counter but doesn’t have time to order, before Eames stops beside him, leaning his elbows against the counter, at the wet patch of what’s probably spilled beer. “I’ll buy you a glass of wine.”  
  
“You don’t need to.”  
  
“I said I would.”  
  
Arthur should say _that was in a dream._ Or maybe, _you only said that because I was going out of my mind with pain._ Or possibly _, fuck off. I don’t want your pity_. But what he says instead is, “I thought you said _a bottle_ of wine _._ ”  
  
Eames bites his lower lip. Fuck. “Oh, you’re needy.”  
  
He’s an idiot, that’s what he is, walking to a gloomy German pub to meet Eames and, most of all, staring at Eames’ mouth. “Obviously I’m not going to hold that against you. I’m alright. We should just go and get out of the city.”  
  
“No,” Eames says, throwing a glance at him, “I meant it. And you came here, so. I’m going to buy you that bottle.”  
  
_Eames_ , he thinks, but he can’t say it aloud. Not here.  
  
“Dick,” Eames says in a slightly louder voice, clearly meant to anyone who happens to be listening to them and who knows English, “nice to see you. It’s been a long time. We haven’t seen since your… your sister’s wedding, was it?”  
  
“I think so,” he says, “and you should just call me Richard, you know.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames says, “I remember you never liked that nickname.”  
  
“I really don’t,” Arthur says and stares at the bastard, “Rupert.”  
  
A smile flickers on Eames’ mouth. Arthur should really stop staring at Eames’ mouth. “Well, then. This round is on me.” And then Eames buys a bottle of wine that isn’t _ridiculously_ expensive at all but very nice, and a glass of beer. They go back to the table and sit down, only table is so small that Arthur’s knees keep brushing against Eames. He keeps shifting them and it keeps happening anyway, which makes him pretty sure that Eames is doing it on purpose. The fucking bastard. He _knows_ Eames can read him but isn’t it a bit low for Eames to rub that on his face like this?  
  
The wine is nice, though. Really nice. And the soccer match on the television is loud enough that Eames doesn’t need to call him Dick anymore, nor does Eames need to talk about Arthur’s imaginary sister’s imaginary wedding. They don’t really talk much about anything. Arthur drinks his wine and once in a while finds himself tracing his fingers on the place where the blade sank in between his ribs. There’s nothing there. Of course there’s nothing there. He _knows_ that.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, barely audible even when they’re sitting close like this, “that shit happens. You’re allowed to freak out.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
Eames takes a sip of his beer and nods at the bottle of wine. “You like that?”  
  
Lying would be pointless. Well, it wouldn’t, because Eames would notice the effort as easily as he would notice the lying. But Arthur is tired. “Yeah.”  
  
“Good.” Eames stares at the bottle. “Can I?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
Arthur hasn’t seen Eames drink of a wine glass too often. He likes it. He fucking likes the way Eames’ lips touch the edge of the glass. “You really like this?” Eames asks, smiling just a bit.  
  
“Yeah. It’s great.”  
  
“You posh idiot.”  
  
He’s not going to argue about wine with Eames. He’s _not._ Also, he’s not going to get blushed at Eames calling him _a posh idiot_. It’s just that it’s been a long day, a really long day or so it feels, and it’s been a long time since he last had alcohol.  
  
“You keep touching it,” Eames says, and for a second Arthur doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Then he realises his fingers are once again pressed against what was the stab wound.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
“I think,” Eames says, slowly, “for a second you forgot where you were.”  
  
Arthur swallows.  
  
“It’s terrifying as hell. I know. It happens to me, too. We just don’t talk about it.”  
  
“For a reason.”  
  
“This business of ours,” Eames says, almost softly, “it’s mad.”  
  
The glass feels cold in Arthur’s hands. He should get out. Eames is talking in a voice that sounds far too gentle and it’s all coming back in waves, like it sometimes does after a particularly bad dream. After a nightmare. For a second he thinks he can feel the blade sinking in again.  
  
“Once,” Eames says, pressing his knee steadily against Arthur’s, “I got shot in the shoulder. I thought I could handle it. And we were inside my head and the money was so good. So I just lay on the floor and waited, but it got worse. It got so much worse. And then I forgot that I was in a dream.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur says, fixing his eyes on his own hands.  
  
“It took me three months until I accepted another job after that.”  
  
“Shit. That’s…”  
  
Eames is drinking his wine, watching him over the rim of the glass.  
  
“That’s a bit personal.”  
  
“I haven’t known anyone as long as I have you,” Eames says, “anyone that’s not dead, I mean.”  
  
“For fuck’s sake –“  
  
“Think about when we grow old and soft in the head. And then we aren’t going to know what memories are real and what aren’t. And there’s going to be… there’s going to be too much for a lifetime. Like, _five hundred times that I got shot in the face._ ”  
  
“You really think we’re going to grow old?” Arthur asks, holding his glass of wine to his lips. It’s probably getting into his head, the wine, that is, not Eames. Maybe Eames as well, Eames’ knee resting against his, steady, heavy, as if that’s where Eames thinks his knee is supposed to be.  
  
Arthur should stop drinking. He definitely should. Eames can read him easily enough when he’s sober.  
  
He takes another mouthful.  
  
“I think,” Eames says, watching him, “I think you’re probably not going to sleep tonight. And if you get drunk enough, there’s a good chance you’ll cry. It wouldn’t hurt for someone to be around.”  
  
“You’re mad.”  
  
“Yeah, well, you’re too.”  
  
That’s true, of course. Arthur must be mad, because he empties his glass and pours more wine and then lets his gaze linger on Eames again, on Eames’ eyes that are carefully reading everything he tries to hide. His gaze keeps falling onto Eames’ mouth, though. Eames has stains of wine on his teeth.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says in a low, easy voice, “can I blow you?”  
  
Arthur blinks. “What?” But it’s too late. Eames can see it all on his face, he fucking knows it, he fucking knows because Eames looks like he finally got Arthur in a trap.  
  
“Can I,” Eames says, smiling nicely, and Arthur wants to punch him, “blow you?”  
  
“You don’t –“  
  
“I do.”  
  
“You can’t just ask –“  
  
“I just did,” Eames says, reaching for Arthur’s glass of wine, emptying it and pouring him a bit more. “Drink your wine. I’ll help you. And then you’re coming back to my hotel. Unless you want me in yours. You’re going to lay down on the bed when I blow you. And then you’re going to sleep and I’ll be on the sofa in case you wake up and need someone to hold your hand for you.”  
  
He should say _no._ That’s simple enough. There’s no way that sort of a thing is going to end well. “Why?”  
  
“ _Why?_ ” Eames says back at him, staring at him straight in the eyes.  
  
He never knew how to read people, not really, not like Eames does. He doesn’t have a fucking clue why Eames is looking at him like that.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, and he’s doing it on purpose, he surely is, the way he says Arthur’s name, slow and careful, and he fucking _knows_ Arthur can’t stop taking glances at his mouth, “I’m curious about your cock.”  
  
He blinks.  
  
There’s no _way_ that’s true.  
  
Or it might be. How the fuck would Arthur know, anyway? But surely it isn’t the only reason. It can’t be. He has to bite his lip not to say _I could just show it to you._  
  
Fuck, he’s actually getting drunk.  
  
“Fine,” he says.  
  
“That’s a good lad,” Eames says. “Now drink your wine.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
When they finally get a taxi, Eames holds the door open for Arthur. It’s raining. Arthur climbs to the backseat, almost knocking his head against the ceiling. His coat is damp with rain and his head is hazy and he doesn’t think this is going to happen. Surely Eames didn’t mean it. Surely Eames isn’t taking him to his hotel, to his hotel room, to his bed which would be huge and excellent, and he would lay down on the sheets and let Eames pull his trousers down to his ankles, and then his underpants. He hasn’t done anything like that in ages. He’s been too busy. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t trust people. You can’t trust people when you’re in the business like this. And he’s been careful. Somewhere along the way, he stopped trusting people to handle his cock among other things.  
  
He doesn’t trust Eames, either. Of course he doesn’t. But Eames is right. Arthur isn’t going to get any sleep tonight. Or if he is, he’s going to wake up thinking he just got stabbed.  
  
But there’s no way he’s going to fuck Eames. No way. No…  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, leaning closer to him. He can smell the wine in Eames’ breathing. The taxi is slowly going through the rainy streets. His head feels numb.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
Eames places his hand on Arthur’s knee.  
  
_What the fuck are you doing?_ Arthur thinks, but vaguely.  
  
“Stop worrying, Arthur.”  
  
“You can’t…” he tries and then clears his throat. Eames’ fingers draw small circles on his thigh. It feels nice.  
  
“A nice city,” Eames says, nodding at the window. The rain is falling down on the glass.  
  
“Stop it.”  
  
“Stop what?”  
  
“Being so nice.”  
  
“I thought,” Eames says slowly, too close to Arthur’ ear, too close altogether, only then Arthur realises he’s kind of leaning against Eames’ shoulder, “I thought you liked them nice.”  
  
“I do,” he says and bites his lip. The taxi stops at the red light. He closes his eyes, just for a second. The sound of the rain on the window glass is somehow soothing. It has an odd rhythm, hard to follow.  
  
“I know,” Eames says, squeezing his thigh. “Snappy at first. You can’t trust them if they’re nice to you to begin with. But in the bed, you want them nice and easy.”  
  
He should ask Eames to stop talking. “Eames –“  
  
“I think you like to push them around at first. Just to see how they take it.”  
  
“I _don’t_ ,” he says but his voice sounds tired. Too much wine. Too little sleep. Or rather, the wrong kind of sleep.  
  
“It was just a guess,” Eames says in a light voice. “Don’t tell me you haven’t done research on me.”  
  
Of course he has. Many times. Eames is good at hiding whatever he wants to be hidden, but Arthur’s always been good at finding out things people don’t want to be found. He knows Eames likes men. Young men, preferably, but not young enough to make it weird. Women, too. But not as often. And Eames never sleeps with the same person twice. At least Arthur hasn’t heard of it.  
  
“Of course you have,” Eames says, “you fancy me. That’s why you’re always picking at me.”  
  
“But you’re always picking at me as well.”  
  
“Good,” Eames says, patting Arthur’s knee, ”you’ve been observant.”  
  
”You never stay with anyone,” Arthur says.  
  
The taxi pulls over. The sound of the engine fades. Eames pays the driver and Arthur’s knee feels cold where Eames’ palm was. He follows Eames to the pavement, to the hotel, to the desk where he just waits when Eames checks in. This is ridiculous. The receptionist probably thinks he’s Eames’ boyfriend. What an absurd thought. They’d drive each other crazy.  
  
“Come on,” Eames says, and they go to the elevator. There’s old jazz coming faintly from nowhere. Eames smells good. “Arthur?”  
  
He blinks. “What?”  
  
“You alright?”  
  
He thinks about it and nods.  
  
“Great,” Eames says, “great. I’m glad. Because it wasn’t fun, I can tell you that, it wasn’t fun seeing you there. All bloody and in pain.”  
  
He catches Eames’ eyes in the mirror. Eames turns his gaze away.  
  
Well, he’s done on his research on Eames but he hasn’t been able to find any evidence that would hint that Eames would’ve ever been in love. But he must have. Everyone has. And it always leaves traces. Soft spots, places where people hurt easily. Something to poke at. Something that can shatter a person who seems strong enough.  
  
God, what the hell is he thinking about?  
  
The hotel room is nice but not fancy. The bed isn’t as huge as he was expecting. He eyes it and then turns to Eames, who closes the door. They check the bathroom and the balcony, but the room is empty, the job went well in the end, no one is waiting for Eames with a loaded gun. Arthur can see Eames’ shoulders inching lower. He still doesn’t seem as drunk as Arthur feels.  
  
“Fine,” Eames says, placing his gun on the side table, “lie on the bed, Arthur.”  
  
Arthur stays where he is. His heartbeat grows tighter, though. It’s good. It makes him feel a bit sharper, not so tired and not like he thought he’d die today. “Really? That’s how you think this is going to go?”  
  
“Well,” Eames says, eyeing him, “isn’t it?”  
  
What a fucking _idiot._ “If you think you can just tell me to lie down, you must be more delusional than I thought.”  
  
He can kind of see a hint of a smile lingering on Eames’ mouth. He ignores it. He ignores the memory of Eames’ palm on this thigh as well, the way Eames’ fingers drew circles on him through the fabric of his trousers. Maybe Eames told Arthur he’d blow him and maybe he followed Eames to the hotel, but that doesn’t mean Eames is just going to get to tell him what to do. He only came here because this day has been too fucking long.  
  
“Do you know what I think?” Eames says in a light voice, as if all this is just a game. “I think you fell in love when you were young. Too young. You broke your precious little heart. Possibly with someone older than you. Like, let’s say, a teacher. Your maths teacher, maybe. You let him blow you in the classroom late in the afternoon when everyone else was gone and the door was locked.”  
  
“Eames, stop it.” It wasn’t his maths teacher. It was a friend of his older brother.  
  
“I bet he left you and you thought _never again I’m going to trust anyone_.”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“But you did and you got your heart broken again,” Eames says, raising his hand and reaching for Arthur’s face, “didn’t you?”  
  
He grabs Eames’ wrist and bends Eames’ arm behind his back. Eames is breathing heavily and _laughin_ g, fucking bastard, Arthur can’t imagine why the hell Eames would laugh -  
  
Then he realises he’s hard.  
  
“I said,” Eames says, his shoulder pressed against Arthur’s chest, his breath on Arthur’s neck, “I said I know you want to push them around a little.”  
  
Arthur makes himself to let go of Eames’ wrist but Eames doesn’t back away, only settles his right hand on Arthur’s shoulder.  
  
“Good lad.”  
  
“Don’t fucking call me a good –“  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, “please, take your trousers off.”  
  
Arthur opens his mouth and then closes it again. His heart is racing. He feels warm. He also feels too tight in his trousers, so he undoes the zipper with somewhat clumsy fingers. Must be because of the wine. Then he pushes his trousers to his knees and steps out of them. Maybe now is the time Eames tells him this was a joke all along and that Arthur is going to hear about it every fucking time they work together from now on. But Eames just stares at him in the eyes, all quiet, and nods.  
  
He pushes his thumbs under the waistline of his underpants and pushes them down as well.  
  
”Fuck,” Eames mutters, sounding slightly surprised. Arthur doesn’t bother pretending he’s not smiling. “Fuck, Arthur.”  
  
“You told me,” Arthur says, “that I like them nice.”  
  
“Yeah,” Eames says, blinking. “Yeah, of course. I just got surprised.”  
  
“That I have a cock.”  
  
“That you undressed,” Eames says, “without being specifically asked to at least five times.”  
  
“Go to hell,” Arthur says, doing his best to sound irritated.  
  
“No,” Eames says, eyeing him. “Don’t bother taking your shirt off.”  
  
“What? You don’t think you’d like the rest of me?”  
  
“No, it’s just that you look so busy. You seem like you’ve just dropped by at my hotel to get a nice quick blow-job before you have to run to do something you think is very important.” Eames smiles at him. It’s nice, the way Eames smiles at him. “I’m going to check the rest of you later.”  
  
“You never sleep with anyone twice.”  
  
Eames breathes in. ”Did your research, didn’t you?”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
“Arthur.”  
  
“ _Eames_ ,” Arthur tries again, but it’s difficult to find words for what he tries to say. This is nothing but a nice thing Eames is going to do to him, probably, because they’re friends in a twisted sort of a way. He’s standing in the middle of Eames’ hotel room naked from the waist down but it doesn’t _mean_ anything. But he doesn’t want Eames to think that he wouldn’t… that he doesn’t… that he couldn’t have liked Eames, really liked, if things were different. “Why?”  
  
“Why don’t I sleep with anyone twice?” Eames asks in a sharp voice. “Why do you think? You’re the one who thinks he’s so clever.”  
  
“Someone broke your heart.”  
  
“No,” Eames says, “no, they didn’t.”  
  
“Really?”  
  
”And no one will have a chance to,” Eames says, “because I’ll be long gone before that.”  
  
He stares at Eames. Eames stares straight back at him, steadily in the eyes. _Damn_ how he wishes he could read Eames like Eames can read him.  
  
“So,” Eames says, “are you ready? Or do you want to push me around a little more?”  
  
“Stop telling me how I like my men.”  
  
Eames smiles at him. He takes a step towards Eames and then grabs the front of Eames’ shirt, just tightly enough to make wrinkles. Eames is leaning his head back, baring his throat, as if he thinks Arthur might want to bite. Arthur doesn’t fucking _bite._ He’s not like that at _all._ At least for _once_ Eames has got him wrong.  
  
“Darling,” Eames says in a quiet voice, “let go of my shirt and I’ll do what I said I would do.”  
  
He lets go of Eames’ shirt and pushes his fingers into Eames’ hair instead, pressing his thumb against the side of Eames’ chin.  
  
“Darling.”  
  
“Stop calling me _darling_.”  
  
“You like it, though,” Eames says, pulls his face away from Arthur’s hand, settles down onto his knees and places his other palm on the back of Arthur’s thigh. It’s too cold. It would be easy to kick Eames in the face. Accidentally. But he doesn’t have time to think about Eames’ cold hands, because Eames wraps his fingers around him and then takes him into his mouth.  
  
Oh.  
  
It’s not…  
  
It’s…  
  
It’s been a while.  
  
It’s not that he’s paranoid or anything, he just can’t trust anyone to do this to him, like, have his cock in their mouth _._  
  
It’s simpler when he jerks off alone.  
  
But it’s not like _this_.  
  
And he likes Eames. He really likes Eames.  
  
He runs his fingers on Eames’ cheeks that go hollow under his touch. His knees aren’t steady, though.  
  
“Bed,” Eames says, pulling back for a second and then watching as Arthur walks to the bed with a bit hazy steps. He still has his shirt on. He probably looks like an idiot. He sits onto the edge of the mattress and then lays down, eyes still on the ceiling when Eames comes onto him, pressing his knee in between his thighs, up and up and up until it brushes against his cock. Fuck. _Fuck._  
  
“Eames,” he says and closes his eyes, “listen, I can… I could…”  
  
“You could what,” Eames says, rubbing his knee onto Arthur, gently, gently enough that it makes him want to grab Eames’ shoulders and push him to the mattress and fucking hold his own cock and take care of this himself, “you could do what, Arthur? I didn’t quite catch what you said.”  
  
He blinks and reaches for Eames’ zipper. It gets stuck in the middle of the way. Eames helps him a little and pushes his trousers down, kicks them onto the floor, underpants as well, and then they’re even, he and Eames. They’re two ridiculous men naked, besides the shirts, in the bed in a nice hotel room at a rainy night in Leipzig.  
  
He wraps his fingers around Eames and starts stroking. Eames makes a gasp.  
  
“I thought you’d be quiet.”  
  
“Fuck you,” Eames says slowly. It sounds like a promise.  
  
But Arthur’s not going to think about that yet.  
  
He thinks about Eames instead, about Eames’ breathing slowly getting ragged, about Eames’ fingers reaching to hold him, then wank him, then bring him so near to the edge he keeps falling out of rhythm, about Eames’ mutters near to his ear, _darling,_ and, occasionally, _you fucking git,_ which means Eames wants him to go faster, but he won’t. He won’t because he wants to do this slowly. He wants to see Eames fall apart in his hands. He wants to see Eames impatient and fucking frustrated and all of that because of Arthur. He wants to see everything.  
  
“You utter bastard,” Eames says right before he comes.  
  
_I like you, too_ , Arthur thinks but doesn’t say, and then Eames bends down and closes his mouth around Arthur, and he comes.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s good, lying on the bed with Eames, skin damp with sweat and the shirt ruined, the pace of Eames’ breathing on Arthur’s neck slowing down, Eames’ fingers on Arthur’s shoulders easy as if this means nothing. It’s so good.  
  
  
**  
  
  
There’s a pain in between his ribs, and blood, blood everywhere, warm blood in between his fingers when he tries to cover the wound that’s becoming a hole. Blood in his mouth. Blood in his ears. Blood in his eyes because his sight is blurring. He’s going to die. He never got around figuring out what he actually _wanted_ in life, and now he’s going to die.  
  
He tries to breathe but can’t.  
  
And then it’s gone, the blood, the pain, and he’s breathing, he’s breathing in sharp little breaths and Eames has his hand on his chest.  
  
“Easy,” Eames is saying, “easy, just breathe. It was just a bad dream.”  
  
“It wasn’t _just_ a –“  
  
“I know,” Eames says, “I _know._ ”  
  
  
**  
  
  
There’s a streak of sunlight on the parquet floor. The sound of air conditioning is a steady hum. Arthur’s head is heavy and there’s an irritating ache lingering somewhere behind his eyes. He needs to go to the toilet, but if he stands up, the mattress is going to shift, and if the mattress shifts, Eames is going to wake up, possibly, probably, and if Eames is going to wake up, Arthur is going to have to talk to him.  
  
_Shit._  
  
He gets out of the bed as smoothly as he can. He’s almost at the bathroom door when he can hear the rhythm of Eames’ breaths breaking behind him. He stops.  
  
“Sneaking out, are you?” Eames says, but something’s off, his voice isn’t as sharp as it should be. He sounds mostly tired.  
  
“Not really,” Arthur says, turning to look at Eames. It’s an odd sight, _Eames,_ lying in the tangled sheets on a hotel bed, his left elbow behind his neck, tattoos Arthur doesn’t remember visible. Eames probably isn’t naked. Arthur wasn’t. But he’s not sure. The duvet is covering Eames from the waist down. And they had sex yesterday.  
  
Fuck, they had _sex_ yesterday.  
  
“Looks like sneaking out,” Eames says. His voice is rougher than usually.  
  
“I just needed to go to the bathroom.”  
  
“Fine, then,” Eames says, not looking like he believes it, “go on. Don’t let me stop you.”  
  
“Eames, I’m not sneaking out. I’m not wearing pants.”  
  
“Oh.” Eames eyes him. He should feel uncomfortable but he doesn’t. “Yeah, your fancy trousers are lacking. Just go have a pee. Or a wank.”  
  
“For fuck’s sake –“  
  
“I just think it’d be a shame if you left without saying anything.”  
  
Arthur tries to figure out something to say and fails, so he turns, goes to the bathroom and locks the door. His reflection on the mirror looks tired and hang-over and more than a little confused. He slept in the same bed with Eames. He shouldn’t have done that.  
  
When he goes back to the room, Eames is sitting on the bed, watching him. He blinks. Eames is not naked, but otherwise he looks… very unarmed.  
  
“What?” Eames says, frowning at him. “You managed to forget what I look like?”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Maybe you always sneak out in the dark,” Eames says, slowly, “so you’ve never seen a man in the bed before. In the morning.”  
  
“It’s not about…” Arthur stops for a second to wonder if maybe it _is_ about that. Then he glances at Eames again. It’s obvious that Eames saw it on his face. “I don’t usually linger.”  
  
“No,” Eames says, “no, you fuck off. Because you’re the kind of a guy who wants to be the first one to fuck off.”  
  
“Stop guessing.”  
  
“I’m not guessing. I’ve been watching your face for years. I can tell. And don’t think that I’m blaming you. I do the same.”  
  
“Right,” Arthur says in an oddly dry voice. He needs coffee. He needs breakfast. He needs a shower and he needs to dress in his suit and fucking leave. But he can’t stop staring at Eames, who’s still in the bed like there’s no rush anywhere. “Do you want coffee?”  
  
“Yes, please,” Eames says.  
  
Arthur wants to ask him stop being so goddamn polite but God knows what Eames would read on his face then.  
  
“And I’m hungry as hell,” Eames says, “aren’t you?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“We could go for a breakfast.”  
  
“Together?”  
  
“No,” Eames says, “we could go to the restaurant and sit at the tables next to each other and pretend we don’t know each other.”  
  
Arthur breathes in.  
  
“Or actually, we probably should do it like that,” Eames says. “It’s in the rules, isn’t it? We aren’t supposed to hang around in the city after the job is finished.”  
  
“We could go elsewhere,” Arthur says and bites his lip. Fucking hell.  
  
“Ah,” Eames says, “we could. Have you bought a plane ticket yet?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“I was thinking, maybe Scotland.”  
  
“ _Scotland?_ ”  
  
“I miss the rain and the fog and the wind that goes through your fucking bones.”  
  
“Sounds nice,” Arthur says. He’s not sure what they’re talking about anymore. Eames probably knows, which is maddening.  
  
“Does it?”  
  
“I meant…”  
  
“ _I_ meant,” Eames says, “you haven’t bought a ticket yet. I’m hungry. Let’s go for a breakfast in Edinburgh.”  
  
“It’s going to take at least six hours to –“  
  
“For a dinner, then.”  
  
“For a _dinner._ ”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, “let me just remind you that not seven hours ago, you came into my mouth. And I liked it.”  
  
“ _Fuck._ Is this a time to –“  
  
“It definitely is. Listen to me, Arthur. I’m not asking you to come to Scotland because you got stabbed in a dream yesterday and because I wanted you to think about something else for a while because I know how bad it can get. I’m asking you to come to Scotland because you’re an odd man and very stubborn and precise with all your little quirks and very good at your job and also,” Eames tilts his head to the side, “you’re one of perhaps two people with whom I can imagine spending a couple of days with.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur says. He’s kind of lost sense of what’s happening here. His headache hasn’t got worse, though. “Who’s the other?”  
  
“My mom,” Eames says, “obviously.”  
  
“Obviously,” Arthur says. “Do you think we’re going to fuck? In Scotland?”  
  
Eames looks surprised, and then delighted, and then thoughtful. “I don’t know. Depends on if you manage to woo me.”  
  
“If _I_ manage to –“  
  
“I got you here yesterday,” Eames says, “didn’t I?” And he’s smiling. He’s fucking smiling at Arthur and he looks just like himself and Arthur’s so frustrated at the stupid bastard who thinks he can say anything at Arthur at any time, and who doesn’t bother to follow rules when he thinks there’re no consequences, and who doesn’t know what _subtle_ means, and who’s sometimes so nice that Arthur doesn’t have a fucking clue what to do with it. Like yesterday. And, perhaps, just now.  
  
“Eames,” Arthur says, “you’re right. Once in your fucking life you’re right. I always sneak out before the other man wakes up because I hate thinking that I’d wake up and they’d have left.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, looking at him as if whatever he’s saying is dead serious, “book us a room in a nice hotel in Edinburgh. Preferably with a king-sized bed.”


	2. Edinburgh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here comes the second chapter! Let me know if you think the rating is too low.

What the fuck is he doing?  
  
He’s breaking all the rules, and for _Eames_.  
  
It’s not that he’s never broken the rules, because he has. But mostly it’s been for Cobb. And it’s been a while since there has been anyone Arthur has wanted to break the rules for. Now he’s in the airport in Edinburgh, waiting to collect his luggage, and Eames is standing next to him, not even bothering to pretend they don’t know each other. Arthur tries to stop looking over his shoulder but doesn’t quite succeed, and then, luckily, they get their luggage and get out of the airport and to the taxi that takes them through the roads to the hotel in which he booked a room with a king-sized bed.  
  
In the taxi, he leans the side of his head against the cold window. It’s not really raining but almost. The light is getting dusky. Eames is sitting beside him, his arms folded in his lap, not reaching for Arthur’s thigh as he did yesterday in Leipzig. Not that Arthur misses that. He places his own hand on his knee and rubs circles with his thumb, like Eames did yesterday.  
  
Fucking hell, he needs to stop thinking about it.  
  
“Stop thinking,” Eames says, eyes on the window.  
  
Arthur swallows. It’s just that it was very nice. It had been so long since anyone had touched him. “About what?”  
  
“You’re thinking about something awful,” Eames says, “I can tell. It’s the way you frown. Your whole face gets all wrinkled.”  
  
Arthur tries to catch a glimpse of himself in the rear-view mirror.  
  
“You idiot,” Eames says quietly. “I’m hungry.”  
  
“You have chocolate on your chin.”  
  
“No, I don’t,” Eames says but turns to him. “Really?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“Fuck.” Eames wipes his chin with the back of his hand, but there’s definitely a smile lingering on his lips. Arthur turns to look at the window. “Well, I ate a lot of chocolate at the plane.”  
  
“Too much.”  
  
“You don’t get to say that.”  
  
Arthur bites his lip.  
  
“Good boy,” Eames says in a light voice. It’s fucking infuriating. It makes Arthur want to grab his collar and tug a bit too hard. Like he did yesterday, when Eames was trying to get him to the bed. But he can’t start thinking about that now. He shifts on the seat and sees Eames’ smile widening.  
  
Thank God, they’re at the hotel soon enough. He pays the driver and then they go to the building, which has a faint smell of an old house and dust. It’s not exactly the kind of a place where Arthur normally stays. He prefers white rooms and white furniture and an absent feeling of everything being replaceable. Now they climb stairs to their room because the elevator is in repair, and the second they walk to the room Arthur knows that whatever happens in this room, he’s going to remember it happened here. There’re deep purple curtains and a huge bed and too bedside tables that look antique.  
  
“Nice,” Eames says and closes the door. The lock goes on with a loud click.  
  
“I’ll change and then we should go find a restaurant.”  
  
“Right,” Eames says, sitting down on the bed that creaks. Arthur opens his case and takes his spare suit. He goes to the bathroom but the heating is up and there’s really no space to change, so eventually he comes back to the room and undresses, ignoring Eames who’s sitting on the bed, his hands folded and a look of vague interest on his face, not even bothering to pretend he’s not staring at Arthur.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He’s always known that Eames kind of looks great. He’s not _blind_. And it might be that one of reasons why he always seems to be in a verge of losing his patience with Eames is that it’s irritating, the way Eames looks, and how Arthur can’t stop noticing it. It gets into his nerves. It’s impossible to focus on the job when you keep taking glances at someone in your team.  
  
But he’s not working now. He shouldn’t be irritated. He should just relax and eat his dinner and drink his wine and then get back to the hotel with Eames and maybe ask Eames if he might like a blowjob.  
  
“You aren’t eating,” Eames says, eyes on his steak.  
  
“Sorry. I was thinking about…”  
  
Eames glances at him. He tries to keep his expression calm and slightly bored but he can feel his face heating up.  
  
“Nothing,” he says, trying to swallow a bit of his food. It’s great and also tastes like a cardboard box. He shouldn’t be this nervous.  
  
“Relax,” Eames says, eyeing him. “You aren’t on a trial here. I’m coming back to the hotel with you anyway.”  
  
“Great.”  
  
“Unless you ask me to fuck off. Because then I will.”  
  
He doesn’t really believe that. “Right.”  
  
“I _will._ If you want me to.”  
  
“I don’t… The food is nice.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, quietly. There’s a slow piano piece playing in the background. It’s probably meant to be romantic. “You don’t _owe_ me anything, you know.”  
  
“I know. It’s just…”  
  
“You’re on a date,” Eames says, pulling his gaze away from Arthur. Arthur takes a deep breath. “You’re nervous. I get it.”  
  
“So,” he says, “this is a date.”  
  
“I don’t know. Maybe we’re just friends, eating a dinner together.”  
  
“We aren’t really _friends._ ”  
  
“No,” Eames says, slowly.  
  
“But neither of us does relationships.”  
  
“How about this,” Eames stabs his steak with seemingly too much force, “we spend a few days here, not stressing about how neither of us does relationships.”  
  
“I’m not particularly good at not stressing.”  
  
“I know,” Eames says, and it sounds like he bites back the rest of it, _darling._ “Just try to, I don’t know, not be yourself for a while.”  
  
Arthur smiles, despite of himself. “That’s very sweet of you.”  
  
Eames smiles back at him. “You’re welcome.”  
  
“I can’t do it, though.”  
  
“I know,” Eames says and goes back to the eating.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It was easier yesterday, that’s what Arthur is thinking about when they get back to the hotel room with enough wine and beer and cigarettes and chocolate to last for, well, at least two days. Eames sits down on the bed with a heavy sigh and opens the can of beer. At the liquor store, Eames stopped to look at the whiskeys and then went on without saying a word, and Arthur tried not to wonder if Eames was deliberately avoiding getting too drunk tonight. Maybe he shouldn’t get too drunk, either. Yesterday he was drunk enough, partly from the wine and partly from getting stabbed in a dream. But today, it’s been nothing besides a dull flight from Leipzig to Edinburgh.  
  
Only the flight wasn’t all dull, because once Eames fell asleep against Arthur’s shoulder, and Arthur just sat there, unmoving, his heart racing, until after a terribly long time which was probably something like five minutes, Eames woke up and said, _oh, did I fall asleep on you?_  
  
“You could have some wine,” Eames says now, when Arthur’s still standing barely inside the room, not knowing what to do, “if you want to.”  
  
“Yes. No, I thought…”  
  
“You’re wondering what we’re going to do and if you ought to be sober for it.”  
  
God, how he hates Eames sometimes.  
  
“Have you ever walked up on a hill?” Eames says, his voice casual, his gaze flickering from Arthur to the wall.  
  
“What?”  
  
“An actual hill, I mean? Not in a dream.”  
  
“I’m not sure. Why –“  
  
“We’re going to,” Eames says, taking a sip of his beer, “tomorrow. That’s what we’re going to do. That’ll give you something nice to worry about tonight.”  
  
Arthur tries to think about something to say but can’t figure out anything. He goes to the bathroom instead, washes his face, then changes to a t-shirt and jeans. When he does the zipper of his jeans, he catches Eames’ eyes through the mirror. Eames’ holds his gaze for a few seconds. Arthur’s skin prickles. But it’s just that it’s been so long since there’s been anyone close enough to him that he’s wanted them to touch him.  
  
_We aren’t close_ , he thinks, swallows the thought with a mouthful of cold water and goes back to the room. Eames is watching him. He pours wine into a glass and sits on the other edge of the bed.  
  
“Are we trying to get drunk?” Eames says.  
  
“I don’t know.”  
  
“I’d say,” Eames says, smiling but somewhat tightly, “we should go for something like comfortably drunk.”  
  
“Comfortably drunk –“  
  
“Tell me,” Eames says, “when was the last time you really liked someone? Someone you fucked?”  
  
Arthur takes a rather big sip of his wine. _Comfortably drunk_ sounds just fine. “You tell me first.”  
  
“Two years ago. In Mombasa. A bit before the Fischer job.”  
  
“Right. So…”  
  
“What was he like?”  
  
Arthur holds his breath for a second. “Yeah. What was he like? And also… it was a he?”  
  
“Yeah. A chemist. Not Yusuf, though, don’t even think about it. I stayed until morning. Wanted him to kiss me. All that nonsense.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames says, his eyes lingering on Arthur’s face. “Your turn.”  
  
“I don’t remember.”  
  
“Yes, you do.”  
  
Arthur shakes his head. “I’m not sure what counts. The last time… I think it was right before Mal died.”  
  
Eames stares at him. “Fuck.”  
  
“Yeah. _Fuck._ ”  
  
“So it’s not, strictly speaking, your own heart that got broken and left you not wanting anything to do with relationships.”  
  
“My heart…” _Shit._ He shouldn’t be talking about his fucking _heart._ But they’re in Edinburgh, they’re alone, and Eames is looking at him as if he really wants to hear Arthur talk about it, and not to use it for something shady afterwards. “I think I’ve broken my heart a few times alright. It might be a coincidence that I haven’t… got attached to anyone since Mal…”  
  
“Died.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And you saw Cobb breaking into pieces,” Eames says in a quiet voice, “you saw it from inside his head. In the dreams.”  
  
“I was careful even before it,” Arthur says, because this isn’t about Cobb and Mal, it really isn’t, although it’s true that he spent a long time hoping silently that Mal and Cobb would’ve never met, since whatever happiness they had wrecked them both up so badly in the end. It couldn’t have been worth it. “It just seems almost impossible, you know, to actually… love someone and be happy.”  
  
Eames is just watching him. He takes a few somewhat unsteady breaths and pours himself more wine.  
  
“Well, enough of that. Where do you live?”  
  
Eames’ laugh sounds almost surprised. “What?”  
  
“You asked me a question. I asked you. I thought this is how it goes.”  
  
“You asked me where I _live._ ”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You want to visit?”  
  
Arthur rolls his eyes. Eames looks delighted.  
  
“And you _do_ realize, I’m sure, that I could tell you any place and you wouldn’t have a clue about whether I’m lying or not.”  
  
“I could try to check it out later.”  
  
“Well,” Eames says, slowly now, “you don’t have to. I live here.”  
  
Arthur blinks. “What?”  
  
“In Edinburgh.”  
  
The mattress sinks when Arthur leans back. “You –“  
  
“Or, let’s say that this is one of a few places where I have a flat and I like this best. I have some friends in the town. Like, friends that I knew when I was… when I didn’t have this name.”  
  
“You brought me _home._ ”  
  
“No,” Eames says firmly, “no, I brought you to a nice city far enough from Leipzig to stay in a hotel and possibly fuck if you want to.”  
  
“You could’ve picked up any place.”  
  
“Maybe I was homesick.”  
  
Arthur can’t imagine Eames homesick. He can’t imagine Eames with a _home._  
  
“You don’t have an imagination,” Eames says, watching Arthur’s face closely. “Okay, my turn. If we were in a dream and I was a projection, what would you ask me to do?”  
  
Arthur holds his glass of wine in front of his face and stares at Eames over it. “You mean…”  
  
“I mean,” Eames says, “sex. What would you ask me to do if we had sex.”  
  
“In a dream.”  
  
“Yes. That’s what I asked.”  
  
“You probably shouldn’t ask me that.”  
  
“You think I shouldn’t ask you anything,” Eames says, too softly. “You think we should go our separate ways until there’s the next job and we can once again get into snapping at each other and pretending we don’t think about fucking.”  
  
“I don’t –“  
  
“Okay. What, then? What would you ask me to do?”  
  
The wine tastes warm and rich. Arthur tries to concentrate on that. “I liked what you did to me yesterday.”  
  
“Oh, fucking hell,” Eames says, “Arthur, you don’t have an –“  
  
“Imagination. Shut up. I would… Maybe tie me up.”  
  
“ _Tie you up?_ ” Eames laughs. “You don’t want to be tied up, Arthur.”  
  
“Don’t laugh at me.” Arthur’s face feels too warm. “You _asked._ You said I don’t have an imagination.”  
  
“You aren’t supposed to imagine what you think _I_ want to hear.”  
  
“I haven’t…” He hasn’t been with anyone in _ages._ And he was never creative about it. It’s just unfair for Eames to ask a question like that and then laugh at the answer. “I don’t _know_ , alright? Maybe I do. Maybe I _do._ ”  
  
“No,” Eames says in an odd sound, almost like he’s complimenting Arthur, “you want to feel like you’re in charge. I’d bet on that.”  
  
“But we’re talking about a _dream_ ,” Arthur says, and something shifts in Eames’ gaze. “In a _dream,_ you’d do it nicely. You’d tie me up nicely And it’d be…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“I could stop thinking for once.”  
  
Eames blinks and drinks his beer. It’s really good, the way he’s looking at Arthur. Arthur has one hand placed on his thigh and he keeps it steady. It’s strange, really, the way his skin seems to remember every touch Eames has left on him.  
  
“And you,” he says, “what would you ask me to do? In a dream?”  
  
Eames pulls his shoulders back and licks his lips, and Arthur wishes he would’ve asked about something else instead. “I would ask you to tell me all your secrets,” Eames says, almost smiling, almost but not quite, “while you’d be fucking me, I don’t know, against your desk or something, and you’d be still wearing your suit because I would’ve interrupted your very busy working. And I’d be naked, of course. You’d want me naked.”  
  
_God._ “Yeah.”  
  
“In a dream.”  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur says in a weak voice and drinks more wine. “So, tell me about your parents. Are they alive?”  
  
“It’s not your turn to ask,” Eames says, his eyes fixed on Arthur’s. “Tell me what you think about me.”  
  
_I can’t tell you that,_ Arthur thinks, holding the glass of wine against his lips for a few seconds. Eames’ eyes keep falling onto his mouth. There’s something in the way Eames is sitting straight, shoulders pulled back, holding a beer but not drinking, when the both of them are supposed to be getting comfortably drunk. “You want to know what I think about you.”  
  
“Yeah, that’s what I –“  
  
“No, I mean, you _want_ to know. It’s not just for a game.”  
  
“Darling,” Eames says and then grins when Arthur flinches, “do you really want to know where I live?”  
  
“Maybe.” That’s true. He’s not sure. Maybe it’d be better not to know, to try his best to keep things as casual as they were: Eames and he, working a job together here and there, bantering and snapping at each other and maybe, possibly, having a mutual wank afterwards, if everything goes right.  
  
“Okay,” Eames says, placing his palm on the mattress and leaning towards it. His tattoos are ridiculous. His arms look like he could lift Arthur up to the air if he wanted. He probably couldn’t, though. “ _Okay._ I want to know what you think about me.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“It’s not your turn,” Eames says in a very quiet voice.  
  
“Fine,” Arthur says, drinking his wine. “It’s not an easy question, you know. Obviously you’re irritable as hell. Every time we work together you keep picking at me. You’re so _unprofessional._ Or, I mean, you’re great. You’re so good at what you do. But the clothes you wear to the jobs sometimes… And you shouldn’t call me _darling_ when we’re working. You _shouldn’t._ I don’t get why you do it. And you always make jokes in the worst possible situations, when everything’s going into hell and I’m so stressed and…”  
  
_Oh._  
  
Eames is smiling at him but it’s not his usual smile, the wide, suggestive, irritable smile.  
  
“You do it on purpose,” he says, and Eames doesn’t look surprised at all, “to get my thoughts elsewhere.”  
  
“Of course I do.”  
  
“And when you call me _darling_ …”  
  
“It’s just me trying to flirt,” Eames says, “ _darling._ ”  
  
He stares at Eames.  
  
“Tell me the rest of it, darling,” Eames says, “the rest of what you think of me. Unless that was all.”  
  
Of course it wasn’t. “Well, I like the way you… look.”  
  
“The way I look.”  
  
“I like your mouth.”  
  
Eames smiles. “And what about my other bits?”  
  
“I like your other bits as well,” Arthur says, trying to sound casual and slightly irritated and not like he’s a bit out of breath. “And what you did yesterday was nice.”  
  
“I _know_ ,” Eames says, his smile bending into something suggestive.  
  
“I meant, it was very nice that you stayed with me. In the dream. And that you asked me for a drink afterwards.”  
  
Eames blinks and drops the smile. “Ah.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“It wasn’t only for you.”  
  
Arthur leans back and watches as Eames takes a deep breath.  
  
“It’s never nice, seeing people you know get hurt in a dream,” Eames says, slowly, carefully, watching him as if the words might be too much, “especially when there’s pain involved. A lot of pain, like yesterday. You don’t know how you looked like, lying on the floor all bloody and kind of frightened even if you tried not to be. That kind of things stick with me. So, I wanted to have a drink with you. To see you were alright.”  
  
“But you knew I was alright.”  
  
“You fucking knew you were alright back there, in the dream. It doesn’t make it _easy_.”  
  
“Of course not. I just meant…” He takes a deep breath. “What do you think about me?”  
  
Eames just sits there for a few seconds, on the bed in their shared hotel room, so close that Arthur could easily touch him, maybe place his hand on Eames’ thigh.  
  
“I think you’re brilliant,” Eames says in a steady voice, “you little prick, in your posh suits and combed hair, always trying to be so serious, always trying to get everything exactly right, never doing anything just for fun. And you’re so good at it. But it’s not all. It’s like, you’re a puzzle and I want to break you.”  
  
“You want to break me.”  
  
“Solve you,” Eames says, “solve you, that’s what I meant.”  
  
_Break me,_ Arthur thinks somewhat vaguely, _oh fucking hell._ “Maybe there’s nothing to solve.”  
  
“Maybe that’s just bullshit.” Eames smiles, just a little. “I like your arse. Especially in those tight trousers you wear all the time.”  
  
“Okay.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames says, emptying what is probably his third beer and reaching for Arthur’s wine. “Can I?”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“Thank you, darling,” Eames says, not watching him. “Do you have more questions?”  
  
“So, you think I’m brilliant.”  
  
“If you ever throw that back at my face in a wrong situation,” Eames says, “like, when someone else is around, I’ll call you _darling_ the rest of my fucking life. _Just_ darling. Never your name.”  
  
“You’d call me _darling_ at work. With clients, I mean.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“And if something bad happened, and we ended up kidnapped or something.”  
  
“I’d call you _darling_ , darling.”  
  
“No, you wouldn’t.”  
  
Eames smiles at him briefly.  
  
“So,” he says, “how brilliant exactly do you think I am?”  
  
“Oh,” Eames says, sounding surprised and happy about it, “ _oh_ , you want to get your cock sucked now.”  
  
“I’m not in a rush.”  
  
“I’d say that you’re averagely brilliant.”  
  
Arthur tries to hide his smile but can’t. Shit, he’s comfortably drunk now. “That’s not a thing.”  
  
“Of course it’s a thing. I just said it.”  
  
“So, you know people who’re, like, considerably more brilliant than me.”  
  
“Obviously,” Eames says, watching him. “Look at you. You’re trying to figure out who they are, these people who I think are more brilliant than you.”  
  
“Not really,” although he kind of was. It’s childish to wonder if Eames likes someone better than him, someone they both know. _Of course_ Eames does, it’s not like he has a thing for Arthur or anything. “I was trying to figure out what I could do so that you found me more brilliant. Like, more than averagely brilliant.”  
  
“Ah,” Eames says, raising his hand, “I lied.” And he leans forward. Arthur leans back but just a little, just in case this is a joke of some kind. Eames places his thumb lightly on Arthur’s forehead, as if to try to smooth the wrinkles Arthur knows he gets when he’s worried about something. “I don’t think you can do anything, really. To be honest, I have a thing for you.”  
  
“A thing.” He sounds out of breath but can’t help it.  
  
“Yeah. A thing.”  
  
“What kind of a… thing?”  
  
“Like,” Eames says, pushing his fingers into Arthur’s hair, or trying to, because Arthur’s hair doesn’t yield easily, “like tomorrow, we’re going to take a bus like normal people do and go out of the town and walk to this nice hill. And it’s going to seem like a date. Or, like we’re not who we are but actual people with normal lives and an ability to get attached to people we like.”  
  
“We’re going to take a bus?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Sounds uncomfortable.”  
  
“It’s probably going to be,” Eames says, “very much so. Are you hard already?”  
  
_Fucking bastard._ As if he doesn’t see it through Arthur’s jeans. “Yeah.”  
  
“Drunk enough?”  
  
_For what?_ “I think so.”  
  
“I think I want you naked this time, if you don’t mind.”  
  
Arthur stares at him for a second and then starts undressing. It’s easy enough. It’s just a t-shirt and jeans. It takes him half a minute to get rid of them and his underpants as well, and then he’s standing on the floor next to the bed, all naked, and Eames is sitting an arm’s reach away from him, apparently staring at his ass.  
  
“Now,” Eames says, swallowing visibly, “if you would be so nice to go stand in the light, please.”  
  
Arthur kind of wants to ask what the hell is happening, but then Eames might stop. “In the light?”  
  
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s too dark in here. I can’t see properly.”  
  
_See what?_ “Maybe you should get glasses.”  
  
Eames laughs at that and then goes all serious again. “Go stand there, yeah, in the bathroom doorway. And put the light in the bathroom on. That’s good.”  
  
Maybe Eames is just teasing him, after all. Maybe Eames is going to tell the story afterwards, _the time when I got Arthur pose naked for me._  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, “ _Arthur_ , look at me. Stop worrying. You’re worrying too much. It’s not healthy.”  
  
“I don’t know what we’re doing.”  
  
“Me neither,” Eames says. “You look gorgeous. Now close your eyes.”  
  
Fucking hell.  
  
Arthur closes his eyes.  
  
“And start wanking,” Eames says.  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s oddly comfortable, doing it in the dark. When his knees start to give up, he hits his shoulder onto the doorframe and then leans against it. He can hear Eames’ breathing and himself breathing and the sound of damp skin against damp skin, and the creak that must come from the mattress. Maybe Eames is shifting his weight to keep in place, not to unzip his trousers and take his cock into his hand. Or maybe Eames is trying so hard not to get out of the bed and come to Arthur, to push his hand aside and replace it with his own, and then Eames would push him against the doorframe, tilt his head back, kiss him on the neck and on the chin and, maybe, on the mouth, yeah, Eames would kiss him, really kiss him, and the doorframe would press into him in between his shoulder blades and he wouldn’t mind, and there would be nothing he could do, anyway, he’d be pressed in between Eames and the wall and Eames’ hand would be taking care of the rest, faster, faster, stroking until finally, finally, Arthur would be ready to just -  
  
He comes into his hand and then sits down onto the floor, still holding his cock, eyes still closed.  
  
When he finally opens his eyes, Eames is still sitting on the bed, having pushed his trousers to his thighs, his hand pushed under the waistband of his underpants, not moving.  
  
“I’ll take care of that,” Arthur says and stands up.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the morning, there’s mist in the streets. The room is awfully cold. Arthur wraps himself inside the duvet and walks to the window. It’s Sunday, the streets are almost empty.  
  
“What the hell are you doing?” Eames asks in a muffled voice. “Come back to bed.”  
  
“It’s a quiet town.”  
  
“Well, everyone who has some sense in their heads is still in the bed. Come on, Arthur.”  
  
Arthur goes back to the bed and lies down on his own side of it, only Eames takes more space than he’s supposed to. Maybe he should tell Eames to back off a little, because otherwise they’re going to end up entangled together. Surely Eames isn’t planning _that._  
  
Arthur opens his mouth.  
  
Eames turns to his side, facing him but not really looking at him. He swallows and keeps still when Eames places his hand onto his side. It feels odd, Eames’ palm, resting heavily on him, odd but in a nice way. It’s just that it’s been a long time. He’s missed this, though. He’s missed having someone touch him, voluntarily, and for no reason whatsoever. He’s missed it like hell.  
  
“Don’t you know how to fucking _cuddle?_ ” Eames asks in a voice that’s low and hoarse and not irritated but rather hopeful. Arthur turns to his side and then shifts closer to Eames, and Eames’ palm falls onto his belly, Eames’ nose gets pressed against the back of his neck, his back leaning onto Eames’ chest. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes.  
  
“You smell nice,” Eames says.  
  
  
**  
  
  
”This is terrible,” he says for the tenth time.  
  
”Shut up, darling,” Eames says.  
  
_Stop calling me darling_ , Arthur thinks, but there’s no point in saying it aloud, is there? The bus is full of people who don’t know who they are and who don’t care, and besides, Eames’ palm is resting on Arthur’s thigh, almost as if they really are, well, _together._ It’s odd. Arthur blinks and looks through the window at the town which is growing smaller and smaller as the bus goes on. It’s raining. He must’ve gone crazy.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Eames says, his thumb drawing a lazy circle on the inside of Arthur’s thigh, “I’ll buy you an umbrella.”  
  
“I don’t need you to buy me anything.”  
  
“Shut up.”  
  
“Don’t tell me to shut up.”  
  
It’s nice, the way Eames smiles. Arthur turns his gaze back to the window. Maybe people in the bus think they’re a couple, him and Eames, a couple who’s been together for years now, having grown used to bantering and picking at each other, but nicely, nicely like they are doing now. And the subtle way Eames is touching him, right now, hand on his thigh, and earlier, when Arthur was staring at the bus, considering whether he ought to turn around and walk away and get a ticket to the first plane to take him out of here, and Eames rested his palm on Arthur’s back, lightly, just for a second.  
  
Maybe people think Eames really lives in Edinburgh and Arthur is an American boyfriend who has come for a visit, maybe for a weekend, or maybe for a week, so they’ll have time to go for a walk on the hill, besides all the sex they’re having. Or maybe Arthur would’ve moved to Edinburgh by now. Surely this isn’t a bad place. He never understood the way people get attached to places. It’s not about places, it’s about people in the places. And memories. Memories about people in the places.  
  
“Don’t tell me you’re thinking about work,” Eames says in a quiet voice. Well, no one’s probably listening to them anyway.  
  
“I’m not.”  
  
Now Eames looks slightly nervous. It’s…  
  
It’s nice.  
  
Arthur swallows.  
  
“What then?”  
  
“I don’t always think about work, you know.”  
  
“I didn’t think you were capable,” Eames says, squeezing Arthur’s thigh slightly, “but, fine. What’re you thinking about? The nice weather we have here in Scotland?”  
  
“Yeah. That’s it.”  
  
“No,” Eames says slowly. He can feel Eames watching him from the corner of his eye. “Just tell me.”  
  
“I definitely won’t,” he says, and Eames smiles.  
  
“Great. I was thinking about that, too.”  
  
Eames is wrong, of course. But Arthur doesn’t mention it. He thinks about Eames’ fingertips brushing against the fabric of his trousers. The gesture probably looks familiar, as if they always do this. As if after the trip to the hill, they’re going to go back to the town, and there’s going to be a house, or an apartment, an apartment with three or four rooms and a view over the dull quiet town, which is nice, very nice for a change. And they’re going to take their shoes off and walk to the living room and sit on the sofa and watch television. When Arthur wants to make coffee, the sound of the coffee machine is going to be familiar. And Eames is going to sit on the sofa, watching him.  
  
_God,_ that’s crazy. And Eames thinks Arthur doesn’t have an imagination.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Eames buys him an umbrella. It’s purple. He takes it and says thank you, and Eames gives him a long smile that looks perplexed, as if Eames is surprised that Arthur _actually took the umbrella and said thank you._ Arthur bites back a smile and starts walking, and the rain falls gently on the umbrella, which is nice. But he’s not going to say it, of course. Eames is going to know anyway.  
  
He doesn’t really enjoy the walking part. His shoes get wet in the middle of the way and the wind keeps catching his hair. But Eames is walking right behind him on the path that’s too narrow for them to walk side by side, and sometimes he can hear Eames whistling tunes he doesn’t know, off-key. Once he asks Eames to shut up and Eames starts whistling _We Wish You a Merry Christmas_ awfully loudly and badly.  
  
“Thank you,” he says, when Eames finishes, laughing. He tries not to stare at Eames’ mouth.  
  
 The view on the top of the hill is nice. They stop to sit on a bench that seems to have mould on it.  
  
“What do you think?” Eames asks, as if it matters.  
  
“There’s just green and grey.”  
  
“You poor git,” Eames says, leaning closer to him so that their shoulders brush against each other, “you don’t have an eye for beauty.”  
  
He glances at Eames.  
  
“I came here with my dad,” Eames goes on, not looking at him, “a few times when I was a kid.”  
  
“Oh.”  
  
“Yes. _Oh._ ”  
  
“That’s…” That’s private.  
  
“He died.”  
  
Arthur takes a deep breath. “Eames –“  
  
“Just saying,” Eames cuts in, “so that you know you should be very nice about these hills. Just so that you know.”  
  
“Fine,” Arthur says slowly, “they’re really nice hills. So green and so grey.”  
  
Eames seems to almost laugh at that. Arthur turns his gaze to the hills. He shouldn’t think that it’s special, what they have, he and Eames. He really shouldn’t. And it’s not like he’s sad about people not laughing at his jokes, because it’s not like tells jokes, either. He’s just not that kind of a guy. It’d be a waste of time to be _sad_ about it.  
  
“So, tell me,” Eames says, “how cold are you toes?”  
  
“Very.”  
  
“You wear so terribly impractical clothes.”  
  
“Well, I’m sorry I didn’t take my hiking gear with me.”  
  
“We could buy you some, though,” Eames says. Arthur isn’t completely sure that he’s joking, so perhaps it’s better not to say anything.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Back in the town, they buy take-away pizza and eat in the hotel room. Arthur tries not to notice when Eames wipes his greasy fingers on his jeans. It’s just awful, the way Eames does things. Arthur could never stand that for a long time. He could never get used to it. They’d be a terrible couple, him and Eames. But then Eames licks his front finger, pushing the fingertip actually into his mouth, and Arthur stops thinking for a second.  
  
“So,” Eames says a few seconds later, when Arthur’s staring at an awful painting hanging on the opposite wall, “I have a proposition.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Look at me,” Eames says, and Arthur does, _fucking hell._ At least Eames isn’t licking his fingers anymore. “You have the PASIV with you. Build a dream for me.”  
  
Arthur swallows.  
  
“For us,” Eames says, his eyes moving back and forth on Arthur’s face as if looking for something.  
  
“For…”  
  
“Sex.”  
  
“You want me to build a dream,” he says as steadily as he can, “for us to have sex.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“Don’t you like this hotel?”  
  
Eames smiles. Arthur shifts on the chair he’s sitting on. “I’m just wondering,” Eames says in a light voice, “what you’d ask me to do if we were in a dream.”  
  
Arthur just stares at him. He can’t be serious. Eames can’t be fucking serious. “But it wouldn’t be… we’d both be actually there.”  
  
“Yeah, well,” Eames says, “it would feel like a waste, having sex with the projection of you, now that I know the real thing.”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
Eames blinks and then turns to look at the window. The curtains are opened. It’s still raining. “Don’t you ever,” Eames says and then clears his throat, “don’t you ever want to try? To use dreams for something like that? Just for you?”  
  
“It’s stupid.” It’s dangerous, it’s too fucking dangerous to try to fix personal things with dreams. Arthur knows that. He’s been in too many of Cobb’s dreams, after all.  
  
“Well,” Eames says, still not watching him, “we could fuck on this bed. Or you could build something, something small, a place you’d think I’d like. And then you could dream me there, doing things to you. Things you wouldn’t dare in the real life. And it’d be okay. I’d be real anyway. It wouldn’t be like you were playing with your own head.”  
  
It sounds dangerous. It’d be so much wiser just to do it alone, with a projection, with a projection looking exactly like Eames, pushing his hand into Arthur’s pants, holding him, squeezing him, and then, tearing him off his clothes, kneeling down on the floor in between his knees, taking him in… Just the projection. Not Eames.  
  
He swallows. “What makes you think we’re going to fuck anyway?”  
  
Eames looks at him.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He pushes the needle through Eames’ skin, then lingers for a moment. Eames’ mouth is in a thin line and he’s watching Arthur as if there’s no way he could take his eyes away from him.  
  
“What did you do?” Eames ask.  
  
“I’m not telling,” Arthur says. It’s almost midnight. He’s probably a bit too tired for this. He tucks at the fabric of his trousers and tries to concentrate. “Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
 Eames must hear Arthur’s footsteps on the wooden floor, because he turns to look over his shoulder.  
  
“You’re in a dream,” Arthur says, “you’re in my dream.”  
  
Something flickers in Eames’ eyes. Then he smiles. “You built fucking _mountains_ for me.”  
  
“I thought you’d like them.”  
  
“You think I’m such a stereotype,” Eames says, glancing at the landscape with dark blue and grey mountains with snow on top of them. It’s just a picture Arthur’s put on the wall within a window frame and they both know it. “A masculine man who wants to have a nice fuck in the wooden hut in the middle of the mountains. You think we’re going to go shooting bears after this?”  
  
“Definitely not,” Arthur says and sits down on the bed that’s narrower than the one in the hotel room. “Do you like it?”  
  
“I love it,” Eames says, “but I feel like you’re having a laugh at me.”  
  
“Well.”  
  
“You fucking bastard,” Eames says, smiling. “But you’re real, right?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“How do I know?”  
  
“You probably can’t.”  
  
Eames stares at him for a few seconds. “The bed doesn’t look exactly _nice._ ”  
  
“It’s not. It’s a bed for a man who goes to the mountains, alone, to hunt bears.”  
  
Eames is watching him as if trying to read his thoughts. He keeps still. He made this. They’re already here. And he has a feeling that Eames isn’t going to hate him afterwards, no matter what. The thought makes him feel kind of light in the head.  
  
“So,” Eames says slowly, “what would you like, Arthur?”  
  
Arthur takes a deep breath. Then he walks to Eames with quick steps, and just as Eames stands up, he pushes him on the shoulder. Not hard, though. Just hard enough that Eames’ shoulder hits the wall.  
  
“What the hell?” Eames asks, but there’s something lingering in his voice, like he’s really not surprised.  
  
Arthur places both of his hands on Eames shoulders and pushes Eames’ back against the wall. Eames tilts his head back and smiles, a wide open smile, and it’s mad, this is mad, they’re both mad, and he pushes his knee in between Eames’ and lets his palms rest heavily on Eames’ shoulders.  
  
“Really?” Eames asks in a quiet voice.  
  
Arthur presses his hips against Eames’, then slips his fingers onto the back of Eames’ neck, holding him tight enough that it’s not a caress.  
  
“You want me to push back?” Eames asks, and then, eyes fixed onto Arthur’s, “you want me to push back.”  
  
Arthur pushes his left hand in between their bodies, places it on Eames’ cock, feeling him through the layers of fabric. Eames is getting there.  
  
“And you fucking wore suit for this,” Eames says, placing both hands on Arthur’s neck for a second, nicely, too nicely, then tightening his grip just a little.  
  
“Of course.” Arthur can feel the words catching in his throat, against Eames’ hands.  
  
“You brilliant -,” Eames says and pushes him back so quickly he almost falls, “you fucking brilliant thing.”  
  
“You aren’t supposed to –“  
  
“You incredible bastard,” Eames says, walking to him and grabbing him by the front of his shirt, then pushing him so that he goes stumbling backwards, towards the bed. “You fucking want to be pushed. You want to stop thinking for a second, because you never can, you can never stop thinking, can you, Arthur? You obsessive git.”  
  
He goes to Eames and shoves him in the chest.  
  
“We need a safe word, though,” Eames says. “Pick one.”  
  
“Edinburgh.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames says, resting his hand on the side of Arthur’s face, the tip of his thumb pushing into Arthur’s mouth. “What about pain?”  
  
“Some. Not much.”  
  
Eames slips his fingers into Arthur’s hair and tucks so that he has to tilt his head back. “You remember the safe word?”  
  
“Yeah,” he says, keeping his eyes on Eames’. Eames lets go of his hair. The stinging ache stays for a couple of seconds.  
  
“Fine,” Eames says and starts unbuttoning Arthur’s shirt. “Let’s get you naked.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s easier than he thought. He has a vague feeling that Eames is making this deliberately easy for him, which isn’t exactly good, because that means Eames knows what Arthur wants, can fucking tell what Arthur wants without asking. But he doesn’t have a lot of time to think. Once in a while, Eames’ hands stop on his face or on his neck or on his arms for a second, the firm grip of Eames’ fingers turning into a gentle caress. That’s when Arthur pushes Eames or, if his wrists are bent behind his back like now, he tries to kick Eames. Eames’ grip on his wrists grows tight again, and then there’s a gentle kiss on the back of Arthur’s neck.  
  
He rests his head on the pillow. He has to concentrate on breathing.  
  
In, out. In, out.  
  
It’s just that he doesn’t want to _think...  
  
_ …think about what happens when they get out of the dream, when they’re sitting in the hotel room in Edinburgh again, when they’re hungry and tired of fucking and have to actually talk to each other or be silent, or what is worse, what happens tomorrow, when they wake up next to each other, and isn’t that bad, Arthur _never_ does that, Eames doesn’t either, that’s _bad_ , and what will happen then, maybe another day like this, but it’s going to have to end soon. It’s going to have to end too soon.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, running his fingers on Arthur’s back, down down down, “stop thinking.”  
  
He tries to roll to the side, away from Eames’ grip, but then there’s a knee pushed hard against the low of his back. He freezes.  
  
“Too much?” Eames asks.  
  
“No. _No._ Just…”  
  
“Don’t think,” Eames says, bending closer to him so that he can feel the heat of another body on him, the heat but not the skin, not yet, why can’t Eames fucking touch him already, why can’t… “Stop thinking,” and a kiss on the back of Arthur’ neck, then on his shoulder, then another with teeth in it, then a heavy hand on the low of his back, slowly going lower, resting on his ass for a second. “Arthur, I’m going to let your wrists go now. Don’t you fucking dare to move.”  
  
_Don’t you dare_ , Arthur thinks in Eames’ voice, _don’t you dare._ He tests it anyway. The bed creaks. Eames sighs in his most irritating tone and then -  
  
Arthur can sense it coming.  
  
“Oh, fucking hell,” Eames says a second later, when the warm ache still lingers on Arthur’s skin, on his left buttock, “oh _fuck_ , you are… I can’t believe you let me…”  
  
For perhaps two seconds his head was empty, really empty. And now it’s gone again.  
  
He turns to his side, grabbing Eames’ arm and pulling him so that he loses his balance, and there’s a surprised sound of Eames’ laugh and then heavy hands on Arthur’s shoulders, turning him back onto his stomach, lying flat against the mattress. He lets himself be turned.  
  
“Just for that,” Eames says in a voice he uses when he compliments someone.  
  
Arthur closes his eyes.  
  
The sound of Eames’ palm hitting him is sharp and it echoes.  
  
“Come on,” Eames says, grabbing Arthur’s shoulders and turning him onto his back, and he doesn’t fight it, can’t fight it, because all he can think of is the fading ache and the still sharp memory of it and Eames’ hands holding him, he likes Eames’ hands, he always did, _fuck_ , he likes Eames’ face as well. Eames is watching him intently now, then brushes damp hair aside from his forehead. “That’s enough, Arthur,” Eames says, sounding out of breath, sounding so familiar, sounding like someone Arthur has known for a long time, “that’s just enough, I’m fucking hard in my pants already. Just lie still for me.”  
  
“Yeah,” he says. Eames still has his clothes on, the clothes he made Eames wear in this dream. Such a stereotype. He shouldn’t be feeling so smug about it.  
  
“What was that?” Eames asks, bending down and kissing Arthur on the point where his pulse is throbbing in his neck.  
  
“Yes,” he says, the ghost of Eames’ teeth on his skin.  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You’ll stay put.”  
  
He lets his head roll onto the side when Eames’ kisses him harder on the neck, then on his shoulder, then on his nipple.  
  
_Oh -_  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You will?” Another kiss, or maybe a bite.  
  
“Yes. _Yes._ ”  
  
“Fine, then,” Eames says in an infuriatingly self-satisfied voice, and Arthur hates the man, fucking hates this arrogant bastard, always has, and then Eames takes a firm hold on Arthur’s hips and takes Arthur’s cock into his hand. One stroke. Another. Third. Can’t think. Can’t nothing. Then, Eames’ mouth on him, Eames’ mouth, Eames’ mouth sucking him off, Eames, Eames…  
  
Maybe he’s saying it aloud.  
  
He doesn’t really care.  
  
  
**  
  
  
Later, he brings Eames off on the narrow bed, placing lazy kisses on the back of Eames’ damp neck, his right arm wrapped around Eames’ side, holding Eames’ cock, and his left arm squeezed in between their bodies, two fingers pushed inside and now curled so that Eames is trembling nicely against Arthur’s chest as Arthur takes him closer. His left arm is going numb but otherwise he likes the way they’re doing this. It’s like holding Eames in his arms. Outside the hut he can hear birds singing. It must be his subconscious’ doing, because he doesn’t remember adding any birds.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He wakes up and keeps his eyes closed for just another second. The birds are gone. There’re sounds of traffic coming through the window, faint footsteps echoing from the corridor. He can hear himself and Eames breathing, their rhythm almost in sync. Slow and steady.  
  
He clenches his fists carefully, opens his eyes and turns his head to the left.  
  
“Hi,” Eames says, watching him.  
  
He swallows.  
  
“It was great,” Eames says. “Listen to me. I’m going to have to take a piss, and then we’re going to eat chocolate and drink the rest of the wine. And then we’re probably going to fall asleep. I don’t know about you but I’m exhausted, almost as if someone just fucked my brains out in a dream.”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
“Don’t,” Eames says, slowly raising his hand and touching the corner of Arthurs’ mouth with his thumb. “Don’t bail on me now, Arthur. What you wanted down there, it was great.”  
  
“I don’t usually… I don’t ever…”  
  
“The next time, it can be something else entirely. If you want to.”  
  
_The next time._ Arthur sits up and watches as Eames goes to the bathroom and closes the door. His heartbeat echoes oddly loud inside his head. So, he built a sex dream for Eames and him and went through with it. It’s not like he hasn’t done weirder things in his life. But this feels oddly personal, as if someone has a tight grip of something inside of him.  
  
“Or are you hungry?” Eames asks, pushing the door open and then doing his zipper. Arthur looks at his arms when he washes his hands and dries them in the towel. Just awful, those tattoos. But he’s kind of getting used to them. “Because we can go eat somewhere if you are. I don’t remember which places are open this late, but I’m sure we could find something.”  
  
“I’m actually tired,” Arthur says, his voice coming out hoarse and odd. He clears his throat. “I think your first plan was great. Wine and sleep.”  
  
“Don’t forget the chocolate,” Eames says. He sounds happy.  
  
  
**  
  
  
In the morning, there’s a sound of rain falling against the window and the slow rhythm of Eames’ breathing, warm against the back of Arthur’s neck. Eames has wrapped his arm around Arthur’s waist and it’s odd, the weight of it. He tries not to shift so that Eames doesn’t wake up and pull his arm away or, what might be worse, leave it there, holding Arthur close as if they’re lovers.  
  
One more minute. Perhaps two. Then he’s going to get out of the bed and buy a plane ticket. He has to fuck off before Eames does.


	3. Chicago

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, here comes the last chapter! My headcanon that Chicago is where Arthur's home is probably comes from fanfiction, but I don't have a clue if it's canon as well.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading :) I so hope I'm going to write more about these two stubborn lovely idiots!

It’s three o’clock in the morning when someone sends him a text message. He reaches for his phone on the bedside table.  
  
_Are you in Chicago?  
  
_ He blinks. It’s been three weeks since he’s heard of Eames. The last time was in the hotel room in Edinburgh, where Eames was sitting on the bed, naked except for his underpants, telling him that he was a goddamn coward.  
  
_Why?_  
  
Eames’ answer comes in fourteen seconds, not that Arthur is counting. _Got shot._ Then, just a few seconds later, thank God: _In a dream._  
  
Arthur takes a deep breath and lies down on the bed. Fucking bastard, to make him think that -  
  
_Fucking ten times.  
  
About.  
  
Wasn’t actually counting.  
  
_ Arthur types _I’m sorry_ , then deletes it. It wasn’t his fault. And why is Eames asking if Arthur is in Chicago? He’s not surprised that Eames apparently knows he has a flat here, though. Maybe it was just a guess. There’s no reason to think that Eames would’ve been tracing Arthur like Arthur has been tracing him.  
  
Another message comes. _Anyway, sorry for waking you up._  
  
Fucking hell.  
  
He dials Eames’ number. Eames picks up right away.  
  
“Was it bad?”  
  
“The dream?” Eames’ voice is thin and tired. “Well, kind of. The fucker missed everything vital. On purpose, of course. I couldn’t reach my gun, couldn’t move. Took me five minutes to wake up.”  
  
“You…”  
  
“Bled out. Felt like five hours, though.”  
  
Arthur clears his throat. “Eames –“  
  
“I’m sorry I texted you,” Eames says, his voice busier now. “It’s just that I knew you were in the city. That made it seem easier somehow. Because you’re near.”  
  
“You’re in Chicago.”  
  
“Yeah. I’m going to try to drink myself out now, so –“  
  
“How did you know I’m here?”  
  
Eames is silent for a few seconds. “I did my research.”  
  
“I didn’t know you were here.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames says, something new in his voice. “Well, perhaps I’m better at this than you are.”  
  
Arthur wants to answer with something snappy, he really wants to. But he has a feeling that if he does, it’s going to be only that, a phone conversation with a lot of bantering. And then Eames is going to get back to drinking and Arthur is probably going to lie on his fucking bed, awake, until the morning. “Where’re you staying?”  
  
“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Eames says, but he sounds hopeful.  
  
“Are you far from me?”  
  
“No.”  
  
“How long?”  
  
“Ten minutes,” Eames says, “three if I take a taxi.”  
  
“Okay,” Arthur says, climbing out of the bed. He should get dressed. He should find something for Eames to drink, or maybe eat, or both. He should go through his apartment and lock everything personal out of sight. “Okay. Come here.”  
  
“Are you asking me,” Eames says, a smile in his voice but it doesn’t sound quite right, “or telling me?”  
  
“Whatever. Are you coming?”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“So,” Arthur says, listening to the sounds of Eames gathering his things, “you know where I live.”  
  
“Of course I know where you live.”  
  
Arthur bites his lip.  
  
“See you in three minutes,” Eames says and hangs up.  
  
  
**  
  
  
By the time the doorbell rings, Arthur has managed to wash his face, brush his teeth and change clothes twice. It’s the middle of the night, he’s at home and he was asleep when Eames texted him. It’s going to look odd if he wears anything proper. But he can’t decide between jeans and trousers and ends up walking to the door wearing only a t-shirt and boxers. He takes a deep breath and checks that it’s Eames who is standing in the corridor. Then he opens the door.  
  
“I thought you’d be wearing a suit,” Eames says and walks right in. “Nice place.”  
  
Arthur closes the door. Eames walks to his living room, stands there in between his sofa and his television, next to the coffee table, glancing at everything at once as if he can’t decide. Then he turns to look at Arthur.  
  
“Hi,” Arthur says.  
  
“Hi,” Eames says, his chest rising and falling. He’s wearing a suit that looks like it was chosen in a rush. His tie is half-off and he’s opened three top buttons of his shirt. “Arthur.”  
  
“Eames.”  
  
“I brought us something to drink,” Eames says, picking a half-empty bottle of whiskey from the plastic bag he’s carrying. “In case you want to.”  
  
“Fine,” Arthur says. “Did you want to… would you like to have some coffee?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“I’ll have it anyway.”  
  
“Okay,” Eames says. “I can drink coffee.”  
  
“I’m going to find you something to eat, too.”  
  
“You shouldn’t bother. Arthur…”  
  
“I’m sure I have something,” Arthur says, walks to the kitchen and starts opening and closing the cupboard doors. He can hear Eames stopping at the doorway. Maybe they should get out of the flat. It’s too weird, having Eames here.  
  
“Your place is smaller than I thought.”  
  
“I bought it when I was 23,” Arthur says. He has yogurt. “Do you eat yogurt? I had been working with Cobb for perhaps a year. I thought this place was huge.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, “I don’t need food.”  
  
“You’re drunk.”  
  
“Not enough.”  
  
He glances at Eames. “I’ll make us coffee.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, walking closer to him.  
  
“Just sit down.”  
  
“I missed you.”  
  
He clears his throat and then focuses on the coffee machine. Eames is just drunk. Whatever he says, it doesn’t _mean_ anything. Necessarily. At least there’s no way to know. And it’s been three weeks and he’s not heard of Eames. Not that Eames has heard of Arthur, either, but still.  
  
“You think I didn’t?”  
  
“ _Eames_ ,” Arthur says.  
  
”You think I didn’t?” Eames says again, walking to him, stopping only when they’re side to side so that he can smell the whiskey in Eames. He keeps his eyes on the coffee machine. Eames raises his hand and rests his fingers on the back of Arthur’s t-shirt, in between his shoulder blades. It’s a slow careful touch. A bit clumsy, too, and then Eames’ thumb brushes against Arthur’s bare skin above his neckline and _fucking hell._ He takes a deep breath. “You think I didn’t fucking miss you, Arthur?”  
  
“Eames,” he tries again, “we weren’t _together._ ”  
  
Eames pulls his fingers away. “You let me come to your house in the middle of the night.”  
  
Arthur bites his lip.  
  
“And you opened the door without trousers.”  
  
“I didn’t have time to find any. I didn’t have… you’ve seen me without trousers before.”  
  
“Oh,” Eames says with a hint of laughter, “ _oh,_ I have. But I’d still have thought you’d be wearing a fucking suit.”  
  
“I kind of wanted to.”  
  
“But you didn’t. You opened the door looking like that.” Eames reaches for Arthur again, runs his fingers down on Arthur’s neck. “Of course I missed you, you fucking idiot.”  
  
Arthur takes two mugs out of the cupboard. “Really?”  
  
“You left in a hurry, though,” Eames says, stroking Arthur’s hair that’s probably a mess. “You freaked out and left.”  
  
“I didn’t _freak out._ ”  
  
“What did you think I’d do,” Eames says, leaning closer to him, “kiss you?”  
  
Arthur pours coffee into the mugs. _Fuck_. This is going to be a long night.  
  
“Arthur.”  
  
He passes the mug of coffee to Eames, who takes it but doesn’t drink of it, only stares at him. They’re standing too close to each other. He takes a step back and Eames follows him, not coming closer, not letting him back away. Then he takes a step towards Eames and Eames steps back.  
  
“Right,” he says. “Let’s go to the living room.”  
  
Eames follows him there. He waits until Eames has sat down on his sofa that seems smaller now, Eames leaning back and spreading his knees on it. Eames blinks and puts the mug onto the coffee table, takes of his shoes and places them aside. Arthur watches Eames’ fingers. Eames’ right hand is holding the coffee mug again, his left hand resting in his lap.  
  
“Could you just sit down?” Eames asks in a somewhat sharp voice.  
  
Arthur sits down in the armchair.  
  
“Can I drink whiskey, too? Do you mind?”  
  
He shakes his head. Eames opens the bottle of whiskey and takes a sip out of it, then of his coffee, then the whiskey again.  
  
“Do you want to talk about it? About the dream?”  
  
Eames glances at him. “Not really.”  
  
So, maybe that’s not what Eames came here for. “Sounds awful.”  
  
“It was.” Eames takes a deep breath, then shakes his head. “Do you ever think that, well, that we aren’t supposed to fucking know what’s that like? Bleeding to death. We aren’t supposed to know what it’s like to die, because normally, _normally_ we’d _die._ And that’d be the end of it.”  
  
Arthur stands up, walks to Eames and takes the bottle of whiskey. He could swear Eames is watching his mouth as he takes a sip.  
  
“I can’t shake it off,” Eames says, “I can’t shake off the feeling of lying there. That’s why I came here.”  
  
“You knew I was in the city.”  
  
Eames gives him a brief smile, as if it’s obvious that Arthur’s just trying to make him think about something else. He points his finger at Arthur. “The job you did last week, in Moscow. I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it at all. Jonathan’s a prick.”  
  
“You used to say I’m a prick.”  
  
“You _are._ But in a nice way. He’s… I don’t trust him.”  
  
“You don’t trust me,” Arthur says slowly.  
  
“Shut up,” Eames says, but his voice is tense. “It was a high-risk job. You don’t do those these days.”  
  
It’s true. He kind of got tired after the Fischer job. “Maybe I needed money.”  
  
“You don’t, not really,” Eames says, watching him closely. “You were just trying to keep busy. But now you have nothing. And you came here.”  
  
“This is kind of my home.”  
  
Eames nods. He must know that this isn’t something Arthur normally does, _ever_ does, letting someone in.  
  
“And I’ve been thinking about, maybe I should go to see Cobb. When I’m in the States.”  
  
“Well,” Eames says, “you always had a soft spot for him.”  
  
“He’s my friend,” Arthur says. He can hear the clock ticking on the wall, his own knee cracking when he straightens it.  
  
“You invite him here?” Eames asks finally.  
  
“No.”  
  
“Just me, then.”  
  
Arthur drinks his coffee.  
  
“You took a high-risk job,” Eames says, eyeing him, and he tries not to notice that Eames’ gaze slips lower on him, stops at his waist, at his boxers. He really should’ve put trousers on before he opened the door. Then Eames is looking at his face again, closely, as if weighting something, and it’s so much worse. “After our trip to Edinburgh, Arthur, after you built a goddamn sex dream for me and let me push you around in it and slap you in the ass, and fucked me, after you _fucked me,_ you got frightened and left and then you took a high-risk job so that you wouldn’t think about me.”  
  
“I didn’t _fuck_ you.”  
  
“Technicalities,” Eames says. “Or maybe you were trying not to miss me. Is that it? Is that why you took a job that could’ve killed you?”  
  
“It really wasn’t that much of a risk.”  
  
“I don’t want you dead,” Eames says, “I want you alive.”  
  
Arthur pulls his shoulders back.  
  
“I want you,” Eames says, more quietly, “alive. And naked. In my bed. In every bed we can find.”  
  
“Eames –“  
  
“I’m drunk. And I just bled out in a very crappy dream. I got money out of it but what the fuck do I do with money, anyway? I can’t wipe the memory off my head.”  
  
“I think,” Arthur says, ”that you’re going to buy a lot of alcohol with that money.”  
  
Eames glares at him. “It was a rhetorical question.”  
  
“I didn’t know you were familiar with the phrase.”  
  
“I’m an educated man,” Eames says, but his voice is tired. ”I want you alive, Arthur. And I kind of hope you let me sleep here, because I’m not going to fucking go back to the hotel, alone, and lie on my fucking hotel bed, alone, remembering how they shot me.”  
  
“You’re going to sleep here.”  
  
“I bet you have a guest room.”  
  
He has, only he never has guests so he never uses the room. “In my bed. You’re going to sleep in my bed.”  
  
Eames tilts his head to the side, watching Arthur. He looks so tired. “Am I?”  
  
“Eames?”  
  
Eames blinks. He’s kind of right, of course. Arthur took the Moscow job not to think about him and, most of all, not to miss him. Also, he likes Moscow. But he wouldn’t have taken the job if he hadn’t been thinking about Eames all the fucking time, and if he hadn’t had the vague feeling that he was falling for Eames.  
  
“Arthur?” Eames says, slowly, as if he’s tasting the word.  
  
“Can I,” Arthur says and clears his throat, “blow you?”  
  
Eames just stares at him. “What?”  
  
“Can I blow you?” He remembers it exactly, the way Eames asked him in a pub in Leipzig.  
  
“Now?” Eames asks, as if he can’t believe Arthur would suggest a thing like that.  
  
“If you want to.”  
  
“But I’m drunk,” Eames says, ”and you were asleep.”  
  
”I’m not asleep now.”  
  
”You don’t have to.”  
  
”Of course I don’t fucking have to,” Arthur says. ”Have you finished your coffee?”  
  
“Not really.”  
  
“Are you going to?”  
  
“I think,” Eames says slowly, “we shouldn’t be drinking coffee in the middle of the night.”  
  
“I’m immune.”  
  
“I’m not.” Eames’ eyes are lingering on him, flicking in between his eyes and mouth. “You mean it.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“You actually like me,” Eames says, sounding almost relieved.  
  
“Yes.” _Fucking hell._ But he let Eames in. There’s no point in trying to deny it now.  
  
“That’s why you fucked off,” Eames says, “you coward. I knew it.”  
  
“Do you want a blowjob or not?”  
  
“Think,” Eames says, pushing his feet forward on the floor, “think about if we fell in love.”  
  
“Fucking hell, Eames, don’t –“  
  
“ _Think about it._ You wouldn’t have to get terrified every time you have a feeling.”  
  
He stares at Eames. “I’d be terrified anyway.”  
  
Eames stares straight back at him. “Well, yeah. Probably. Because you’ve had your heart broken before and you’d rather take ten shots in the face than let someone walk away from you again.”  
  
Arthur sits back in his hair and tries to drink more coffee, but the mug is empty. He takes the whiskey instead.  
  
“I know,” Eames says, “I know how it is. I think. Because I’ve had, you know, I’ve had someone grow tired of me and just fucking leave me when I still… but I kind of think that I’d like to take a chance.”  
  
The whiskey burns in Arthur’s throat.  
  
“With you. Because I can’t remember the last time I liked someone as much as I like you.”  
  
Arthur breaths in, and out, and in.  
  
“Arthur.”  
  
“We should go to the bed.”  
  
“ _Arthur._ ”  
  
“I like you,” he says and stands up, “I like you, alright? Is that what you want?”  
  
“Well,” Eames says slowly, watching him, “kind of, yeah.”  
  
“Good,” he says and walks out of the living room, then turns back and stands in the doorway, because Eames is still sitting on his sofa as if there’s no rush whatsoever. “And I’m going to get fucked up if something happens to you. Or if you get bored with me. Fucking great.”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, biting his lip, “I think, I _think_ I could take that blowjob now.”  
  
“You aren’t going to get a fucking blowjob anymore.”  
  
“Because I told you I’m falling in love with you?”  
  
“You are… _what?_ ”  
  
Eames stands up, not completely steadily, walks past Arthur, to the corridor. “Where is the bedroom? Or don’t tell me, I’m going to find it anyway.”  
  
“You’re a fucking bastard,” Arthur says, “you can’t just tell me that you are…”  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, pushing the bedroom door open, “you have clothes on the floor.”  
  
“Well, I –“  
  
“You’re supposed to be neat and tidy.”  
  
”This is my _home._ ”  
  
“I know,” Eames says, walking to bed, sitting down on the edge of it and starting to undress, only he seems to get stuck on getting rid of his tie. “I love it.”  
  
“You love me not being neat and tidy.”  
  
“Yeah.” Eames sighs deeply and then glares at Arthur. “Arthur, help me.”  
  
So Arthur helps. He undoes Eames’ tie and unbuttons his shirt and takes everything off, slowly at first and then kind of in a rush because Eames’ eyelids start slipping close. But in the end he has Eames lying on his back on the bed, his head resting on Arthurs’ pillow, his cock in Arthur’s mouth, and he’s not patient _at all_ , he moans and writhes and can’t keep still until Arthur’s pressing his hips into the mattress tight enough that it’s going to leave bruises. But Eames doesn’t seem to mind.  
  
It’d be crazy to fall in love with Eames. Just crazy. But then Eames comes and Arthur spits and then takes his t-shirt off and lays down on the bed next to Eames, and Eames looks at him like he’s the best thing in the whole fucking world.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He gets out of the bed, puts his t-shirt on, then takes it off because it’s inside out and puts it on again, walks to the kitchen, loads the coffee machine and checks the fridge. There’s nothing besides yogurt. They’re going to have to go out for breakfast. Or he could go to the supermarket and buy something, which would be probably for the best.  
  
The floor creaks somewhere in the flat, probably in the bedroom.  
  
Arthur spends a few more seconds staring at the coffee machine and then goes back. Eames is sitting on the edge of the bed, his bare feet on Arthur’s white and grey carpet, his eyes somewhat red, the heel of his hand pressed on the side of his head.  
  
“Headache?”  
  
“Not bad,” Eames says and winces.  
  
“I don’t have anything to eat. I should go and buy something.”  
  
“You’d leave me here,” Eames says, glancing at him, “alone?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
”What if I sell everything you own?”  
  
”There’s a store a few blocks away,” Arthur says. “I’ll go there.”  
  
“I could just go,” Eames says, eyeing him warily.  
  
“Bullshit,” Arthur says, trying to sound more certain than he is. “Just take a shower. I’ll be right back.” He walks away before Eames has time to say anything.  
  
  
**  
  
  
He doesn’t have an idea what Eames _eats._ Well, he knows what Eames eats in restaurant and, accidentally, at hotel breakfasts. But he doesn’t have a fucking clue what to buy now that he’s in the store, holding a shopping basket, standing in between the shelves and getting elbowed by old ladies who seem to think he’s on the way. This is too fucking hard. He almost calls Eames and asks but then holds himself back. Eames would laugh at him.  
  
In the end, he buys a bit of everything he can think of and the old ladies look at him funnily in the line. When he gets back to his flat, it’s all quiet in there and for a second he holds his breath. Then the water starts running in the bathroom.  
  
“I tried to empty the place,” Eames says five minutes later, stopping in the kitchen doorway, Arthur’s towel wrapped around his waist. “But I couldn’t get anyone come with a van this early in the morning, so I gave up and took a shower instead. I hope you don’t mind.”  
  
Arthur bites back a smile and keeps slicing the bread.  
  
“Also, nothing in this flat is particularly expensive,” Eames says, walking to Arthur, leaning his back against the kitchen counter and staring at Arthur’s hands. He smells of Arthur’s shampoo. “Funny, don’t you think? Because I always thought you liked expensive things.”  
  
“I told you. I bought this place when I was 23.”  
  
“It looks like someone might actually live here,” Eames says, “like, a person.”  
  
“A person.”  
  
“An odd, stubborn person with a good taste and averagely bad commitment issues. Like yourself.”  
  
“I don’t have…” Arthur begins but closes his mouth.  
  
“A good taste? No, perhaps not. Maybe we should go shopping.”  
  
He glances at Eames. “Did you sleep well?”  
  
“Fine, thank you,” Eames says, staring at him as if trying to see straight through. “I thought we’d cuddle, though.”  
  
“You fell asleep.”  
  
”I meant, in the morning.”  
  
_Cuddle_ , Arthur thinks, trying to cut the cucumber in slices as thin as he can. They shouldn’t _cuddle._  
  
“Because why not,” Eames says, taking a slice and putting it into his mouth, just like that, like he thinks he can just take one of Arthur’s cucumber slices and… Arthur blinks. “Why wouldn’t we cuddle in the morning, that’s what I thought.”  
  
Arthur thinks he bought milk, he just can’t remember where he put it.  
  
“Why not, Arthur?” Eames asks, leaning closer to him, all his bare wet skin with Arthur’s scent in it. Arthur’s shampoo, Arthur’s shower gel, Arthur’s soap. Arthur’s towel on Eames’ waist.  
  
“I just think,” he says and takes a deep breath, “I just think, we shouldn’t get too comfortable.”  
  
“Or what?” Eames says, raising his hand slowly, stroking Arthur’s hair back from his forehead. “Your hair is different when you don’t have product in it.”  
  
“Of course it is.”  
  
“I like it. So, what did you buy for me?” Eames eyes the food on the counter. “Everything?”  
  
“I couldn’t decide.”  
  
“That’s sweet of you.”  
  
“No, it’s not,” Arthur says, too quickly. “I just didn’t know what you eat for breakfast.”  
  
“Yes, you do. You’ve been watching.”  
  
He shakes his head.  
  
“Arthur.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Thank you for yesterday.”  
  
He stares at Eames, who’s too close to him. It’d be so easy to lean forward, to push their mouths together.  
  
“You got me off,” Eames says, pressing his thumb against the back of Arthur’s neck, as if he’s trying to find a button there. “And I fell asleep before I could return the favor.”  
  
“I didn’t mind.”  
  
“Why?” Eames says, his fingertips slipping under the neckline of Arthur’s t-shirt.  
  
Arthur really wants to pour coffee into the mugs, but then he’d have to move away from Eames’ touch. “Can’t we just eat the fucking breakfast now?”  
  
“Shhhh,” Eames says. “Think about it. If I’m just a convenient fuck for you, why didn’t you mind? You should’ve.”  
  
“Just stop it, Eames.”  
  
”Stop what?”  
  
_Asking questions,_ Arthur thinks. _Rubbing it on my face. Making me think that we are… that I am…  
  
_ “Fuck, you’re stupid,” Eames says, taking a step back. “I’m right here, Arthur. You’ve got me _right here.”  
  
_ Arthur watches him take a slice a bread and stuff it into his mouth as if he’s in a hurry to eat something now, then turn around and walk to the living room with the hem of the towel flapping around his knees. He sits down in Arthur’s armchair and swallow the rest of the bread, then crosses his knees, leans back, places his arms on the armrests, stares back at Arthur as if he’s going to stay and Arthur’s just going to have to deal with it.  
  
“You’ve got me right here,” Eames says, “like this.”  
  
“What do you mean, like this?” Arthur asks. His voice comes out a bit thin.  
  
“I wanted to fucking cuddle,” Eames says, “and you sneaked out.”  
  
“I just wanted to make coffee.”  
  
“Last time,” Eames says, “last time you bought a ticket to fucking Los Angeles and left me in that hotel room, right after you used me to fill your fantasy for you.”  
  
“Sorry. That was -”  
  
“Don’t you fucking say that it was _inappropriate_. Sometimes I don’t know what the hell I see in you.”  
  
Arthur opens the fridge. His hands seem a bit unsteady.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says from behind his back, his voice getting kinder, which is bad, this is _bad_ , “Arthur, I changed my mind. I have a guess. Maybe what I see in you is that you’re so goddamn good-looking sometimes. Like when you’re standing there in your kitchen, in your t-shirt and jeans, looking almost like an actual human being.  And you’re trying to make me breakfast, and you can’t even fucking say that you have a thing for me. Maybe that’s what I see in you.”  
  
Arthur stands still for a moment. Butter and marmalade. He has to ask whether Eames prefers butter or marmalade.  
  
“So,” Eames says, his voice easy and light, “what’re you doing today?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“Can I stay?”  
  
“Fine,” Arthur says, _butter and marmalade, butter and marmalade_ , they’re going to eat breakfast first. Just breakfast. “ _Fine._ ”  
  
  
**  
  
  
They go for a walk in the park. Eames is wearing Arthur’s coat because it’s raining and apparently Eames came here straight from Southern Spain and didn’t bother to bring anything warm, so there he walks, a step away from Arthur, a bit too close for anyone to think they don’t know each other, wearing Arthur’s dark blue coat and Arthur’s scarf. He’s seen Eames do odd things, both in dreams and in real life, but somehow this seems the worst of them.  
  
The coat is too small for Eames, of course. And it seems Eames is ignoring that on purpose.  
  
“A nice day,” Eames says, looking straight ahead.  
  
“Yeah,” Arthur says. A couple with a dog walks past them. Eames turns to look. “What –“  
  
“The dog,” Eames says in a low voice. “I’m a dog person. Don’t tell anyone.”  
  
“What, you think they’d blackmail you with that information?” Arthur asks, thinking, _what, you think I wouldn’t?  
_  
  
“Probably,” Eames says in a grim voice. “Don’t you like them?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Dogs.”  
  
“ _Eames._ ”  
  
“It’s just small talk,” Eames says, “breathe. So, is this where you take your afternoon walks? When you’re in between jobs and pretending you’re a normal human being?”  
  
“I don’t.”  
  
“Well, I know. Obviously. You don’t bother.”  
  
_What the hell are we doing_ , Arthur thinks as the path narrows down and their arms brush each other.  
  
“I was thinking,” Eames says in a low voice, leaning closer to Arthur like an idiot, as if they’re two people who are having a walk in the park because they’re in love, “I was thinking, I should probably return the favor.”  
  
“Shup up,” Arthur says, thinking about how they were lying on the bed afterwards, and he _knew_ Eames was going to fall asleep, but not yet, no, Eames was still barely awake, slipping his fingers into Arthur’s hair, caressing the back of his neck, his grip slowly going firmer as if he was trying to keep Arthur in place. Or, not to let Arthur slip away.  
  
Or, not to let Arthur panic and buy a ticket to the first plane and fuck off.  
  
“I didn’t mean the blowjob,” Eames says now, and the old woman sitting on the bench nearby glances at them quite sharply. “I meant the dream.”  
  
Arthur bites his lip. “Don’t.”  
  
“I was thinking,” Eames says slowly, “maybe I’d build you an office. A nice office with a view over the city. New York, I think. Big windows, too. And I’d be working late at my desk, wearing my suit, a very nice suit, let me tell you. Just the way you like them. And then you’d find me there. You’d come to me and say, _Mr. Eames, it’s late. Aren’t you going to go home?_ ”  
  
Arthur bites his lip harder. “You don’t know how to build.”  
  
“And then,” Eames says, “then I’d stand up. Slowly. In my suit. I’d turn to you. And you’d see it in my eyes. You’d know right away that I’d be thinking about making you fuck me on my goddamn desk. Or, maybe not on the desk, no, against the window. With the view. You’d have me spread against the window. And it’d be late in the evening, dark outside. The lights on in the office.”  
  
“I thought -,” Arthur begins, but his voice cracks.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says, leaning closer, “ _Arthur._ Fucking hell.”  
  
“No,” Arthur says, clearing his throat, “I think _you’d_ have me. Against the window.”  
  
“In a dream.”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
“That I can’t build,” Eames says. “Should we go back to your place? Your coat is too small for me. I’m sure I look ridiculous.”  
  
Arthur looks the other way.  
  
It’s strangely easy, walking back home with Eames. He keeps the front door open for Eames, then closes it behind them, and watches as Eames gets out of the coat that really is too small. It’s a shame. It was nice, Eames wearing Arthur’s clothes. But he shouldn’t be thinking about that. He walks to the kitchen and starts loading the coffee machine and that’s when Eames walks to him, presses both palms on his sides and keeps them firm and still.  
  
“Just tell me to fuck off,” Eames says, coming closer, pressing his hips against Arthur’s ass. Oh, for fuck’s sake -  
  
“You should’ve brought your own coat. It’s _Chicago._ ”  
  
“Ah,” Eames says, pushing his thumbs under the hem of Arthur’s t-shirt. Eames is half-hard already. Arthur leans back but keeps from looking at Eames.  
  
“It’s almost like you planned it. Borrowing my coat, I mean.”  
  
Eames laughs in a breathless voice, his mouth too close to Arthur’s ear. He can feel the warm breath on his neck. “So, you liked it.”  
  
“That’s inappropriate,” Arthur says, “Mr. Eames.”  
  
“What is?” Then, closer to Arthur’s neck: “ _What is?_ ”  
  
It’s almost as if Eames is going to kiss him. “Well, trapping me like this. In my own kitchen. When I was just going to make coffee. And you’re pushing your erection against my ass, Mr. Eames.”  
  
_Shit_ it’s good, the way Eames laughs. “I apologize.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Also, you could get rid of me in a second. You could break my arm if you wanted and have me on the floor.”  
  
“You think so?”  
  
“Yes.” Eames takes a deep breath, then touches Arthur’s neck with his fingertips. “Do you want me to back away?”  
  
“Well, don’t bother.”  
  
“Don’t bother?”  
  
Arthur turns. The edge of the counter is sharp against his hips, then he leans back against it. Eames’ hands get back onto his sides. Eames’ eyes are moving back and forth on his face, up and down, stopping at his mouth and his eyes and then at his mouth again. He takes a deep breath.  
  
“Arthur,” Eames says. His voice is rough and his eyes are lingering on Arthur’s mouth.  
  
“Yeah?” Eames is probably going to ask for a blowjob, or offer one. Or maybe he’s going to say something snappy. Maybe this is going to end now. Maybe Eames is going to leave. If that happens, Arthur’s going to buy a ticket to the first fucking flight to somewhere, anywhere, maybe to Los Angeles. It’d be nice to see Cobb. But Cobb would know that something’s off. Cobb would know that someone’s left Arthur again, even if it’s been _years_ since that last happened and Cobb saw him in fucking pieces before he could get himself back together.  
  
Arthur opens his mouth to add that they should probably fuck or something.  
  
Eames grabs his chin. “Do you mind?”  
  
“What?” he asks.  
  
Eames leans closer and kisses him on the mouth.  
  
He places his hands on Eames’ shoulders.  
  
“Fuck,” Eames says against his mouth, “fucking hell, Arthur. Can’t you just be a little more…”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Shut the fuck up,” Eames says, kissing him harder.  
  
It’s good. It’s really good. And it’s been ages since he’s kissed anyone at all, anyone who meant something, anyone with whom he wanted to stay for more than a…  
  
He holds Eames’ face in between his hands. Eames’ stubble is pretty bad, though.  
  
“You should shave.”  
  
“I think,” Eames says, laying wet kisses on Arthur’s mouth, “bed. Now.”  
  
  
**  
  
  
It’s weird, lying there on his own bed when Eames is placing a wet trail of warm kisses in between his ribs, one hand holding his hips down to the mattress and the other on his face, on his neck, the grip on his chin tight enough that he can’t look down when Eames bends down in between his knees, and the mattress creaks, and the rhythm of the rain against the window grows restless, and Arthur’s breathing does as well. This isn’t what he does. He never does things like this. He never lets men to his home. He never lets anyone kiss him and then go down on him. He never lets anyone hear him whimper like this. He never does things like this. Never.  
  
  
**  
  
  
“Chicago,” Eames says, sitting naked in Arthur’s armchair, a glass of whiskey in one hand and a sandwich in the other, “I don’t know. Doesn’t seem like a bad place. But, still.”  
  
“What, are you planning to stay?”  
  
Eames grins at him.


End file.
